Press Releases: 2017

January

1/31/2017 1/30/2017 (New York Time) Science Will Suffer Under Trump's Travel Ban, Researchers Say"I'm concerned about it hampering our ability to recruit outstanding graduate students," said Samuel L. Stanley Jr., the president of Stony Brook University on Long Island. Dr. Stanley spent the weekend monitoring the work of immigration lawyers in a successful effort to release a Stony Brook graduate student from Iran, Vahideh Rasekhi, who was en route to Kennedy Airport when the order was issued and was detained after she landed.

1/31/2017 1/30/2017 (CBS Boston) Advice On How To Spot 'Fake News'We've been hearing a lot about "fake news" from President Trump and many others these days. So what does it mean? About ten years ago, Stony Brook University pioneered a course called News Literacy. It teaches students the basics of news -- what is a good source, and a weak one, how to spot an agenda in a news story, how to spot propaganda and a public relations push. "We had to teach the audience what is reliable information and what was bunk," Stony Brook journalism school dean Howard Schneider told WBZ NewsRadio 1030.

1/31/2017 1/30/2017 (Newsday) Colleges advise students to delay travel outside U.S.Over the weekend, Stony Brook University doctoral student Vahideh Rasekhi was detained at Kennedy Airport. Rasekhi, of Iran, is earning a Ph.D. in linguistics and is president of the school's Graduate Student Organization. She had been visiting her family and began her travels back to the United States before the executive order went into effect.

1/30/2017 1/27/2017 (Scientific American) Scientists Increasingly Speak Out"I think we're entering into an era where scientists are concerned it's not enough to speak the truth about what's happening, for example, with climate change or immunization or the natural world as a whole," said Laura Lindenfeld, director of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. "I think people are drawn to us because we can help teach them different ways to convey that same information that is grounded in scientific truth."

1/30/2017 1/29/2017 (Newsday) Stony Brook student held at JFK in Trump travel ban releasedVahideh Rasekhi, an Iranian sixth-year doctoral student in Stony Brook University's linguistics department, and other detainees were released from Kennedy Airport Sunday after being held under a U.S. entry ban issued Friday by the White House.Rasekhi is pursuing a doctorate in linguistics and is president of the Graduate Student Organization, SBU spokeswoman Lauren Sheprow said.

1/27/2017 1/26/2017 (Popular Science) Take It from a Former Park Ranger: No One Is Going RogueWhen snow collects on the ground, there's a lot of air between the flakes. Eventually--with the help of the kinds of cold temperatures easily achieved in Antarctica--this snow gets buried under more snow and is compressed into ice. Here, pockets of air get sealed off in bubbles, explains Briner.
This process is so straightforward that "anyone who has a freezer has unintentionally done the same thing nature has," says David Black, who studies paleoclimatology at Stony Brook University. If you made ice yesterday, you have a record of Earth's atmospheric conditions from one day ago--congratulations. By extracting deep cores of Earth's oldest ice, scientists have made a record of Earth's climate from hundreds of thousands of years ago.

1/27/2017 1/26/2017 (Times Beacon Record) Stony Brook University, Brookhaven National Lab's Frenkel combats chemical weapons with fine structureFirst responders, soldiers or those exposed to any kind of chemical weapons attack need a way to remove the gas from the air. While masks with activated carbon have been effective, the latest technological breakthrough involving a metal organic framework may not only remove the gas, but it could also disarm and decompose it. That's the recent finding from research led by Anatoly Frenkel in a study on a substance that simulates the action of sarin nerve gas. Frenkel, who is a senior chemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory and a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering at Stony Brook University, worked with metal organic frameworks, which contain zirconium cluster nodes that are connected through a lattice of organic linkages.

1/27/2017 1/26/2017 (USA Today College) How much do colleges truly improve the lives of their poorest students?How much is your degree worth? What's the connection between your degree and your future earnings? Most college students want to know the answers to these questions. And they're probably most pressing for students of limited means. Does a college education actually improve outcomes for lower-income students? And if so, by how much?...In contrast, at Stony Brook, a state university in New York, where about 16 percent of students came from low-income households, more than half of all students reached the top fifth of earners. Stony Brook has a mobility rate of 8.4 percent.

1/26/2017 1/26/2017 (USA Today) Trump's dangerous game with the news media: ColumnArticle author Jon Friedman, who wrote MarketWatch's Media Web column for 13 years, teaches at the Stony Brook University School of Journalism writes, "Even before Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the nation's 45th president, he had all but declared war on the American media. But if history is a reliable judge, Trump is playing a dangerous game."

1/26/2017 1/25/2017 (Huffington Post) Erin Andrews' Cervical Cancer Diagnosis Is A Reminder For Women To Get Screened"Screening is designed to detect changes before they become severe," Michael Pearl, professor and director of the division of gynecological oncology at Stony Brook Hospital, told The Huffington Post. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that women between the ages of 21 and 65 get the regular tests for the condition. According to the most updated data from the CDC, fewer than 5,000 women died from cervical cancer in 2013 and most women who died from the disease did not engage in routine screenings. "In reality there is no excuse not to get a pap," Pearl said.

1/25/2017 1/24/2017 (Symmetry) Five extreme facts about neutron starsIt's been speculated that if there were life on neutron stars, it would be two-dimensional. Neutron stars have some of the strongest gravitational and magnetic fields in the universe. The gravity is strong enough to flatten almost anything on the surface. The magnetic fields of neutron stars can be a billion times to a million billion times the magnetic field on the surface of Earth.
"Everything about neutron stars is extreme," says James Lattimer, a professor at Stony Brook University. "It goes to the point of almost being ridiculous."

1/24/2017 1/23/2017 (NBC News) Dr. Magician: Med Student Uses Magic to Make Patients' Fear DisappearWith a deck of cards and stethoscope in hand, David Elkin is not your typical third-year medical student. Along with medicine, he practices magic on his patients to make their anxiety and fear disappear. "Magic is unique in that it allows you suspend your disbelief and make you feel that the impossible is possible."
Elkin, 27, started MagicAid and serves as the resident "doctor magician" at Stony Brook Children's Hospital, performing for kids and their families every week on the pediatrics floor.

1/24/2017 1/23/2017 (Innovate LI) Four Fair Chances for Employers, Stony Brook University GradsWith the Spring 2017 semester begun and graduation closing in - just over 100 days and counting - Stony Brook University is hosting a four-headed career fair for its latest professional crop.
In February and March, thousands of university students - looking beyond their May 19 graduation date - will meet with recruiters in key technology and healthcare fields to discuss employment and internships. Hundreds of employers are expected to line up for the Stony Brook University Spring 2017 Job & Internship Fair, to be held over four days at the university's Student Activities Center.

1/23/2017 1/ 21/2017 (Newsweek) States, Cities Plan Robust Defense of Climate Science in Donald Trump EraAnd then there are the fights happening outside the walls of any council chamber, courthouse, or statehouse. The Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign has been taking its case directly to the public energy utilities that decide whether to close coal-fired power plants. Last year, the organization helped shutter 24 coal plants, extending a string of successes for Beyond Coal since it launched in 2010. Closing these plants has curbed carbon emissions and led to cleaner air and water. In November, a research team at Stony Brook University in New York examined Western Atlantic bluefin tuna and found that a poisonous byproduct of burning coal, methylmercury, had dropped 20 percent over the last decade.

1/19/2017 1/18/2017 (New York Times) America's Great Working-Class CollegesAt City College, in Manhattan, 76 percent of students who enrolled in the late 1990s and came from families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution have ended up in the top three-fifths of the distribution. These students entered college poor. They left on their way to the middle class and often the upper middle class. The equivalent number at the University of Texas, El Paso, is 71 percent. At California State University in Bakersfield, it's 81 percent. At Stony Brook University, on Long Island, it's 78 percent, and at Baruch College in Manhattan, it's 79 percent.

1/19/2017 1/19/2017 (Inside Higher Ed) Uneven Access, Equal SuccessAlthough students who come from wealthy backgrounds are far more likely to attend highly selective colleges than students from poor families, rich and poor students who go to the same college will achieve equal financial success, a new study from the Equality of Opportunity Project found...It's not immediately apparent how these institutions -- which include the University of Texas System, the State University of New York at Stony Brook and California State University, Los Angeles -- propel their students into success, Friedman said. The authors could not find a direct correlation with tuition costs, student-faculty ratios or emphasis on a certain field, such as STEM or business. And yet, at Stony Brook, 51 percent of the students who start in the bottom 20 percent will eventually rise to the top 20 percent. At Cal State, LA, that number is about 30 percent.

1/19/2017 1/18/2017 (Newsday) Masked hypertension affects millions, LI researchers sayMillions of people who think they have healthy blood pressure because the clinician who measured it found it to be normal may be among the 1 in 8 Americans with so-called masked hypertension, Long Island researchers reported Wednesday. The condition is so widespread, said Joseph Schwartz, the Stony Brook University medical investigator who led the research, that scores of people have been misclassified as having healthy blood pressure. In reality, he said, these patients have masked hypertension, a term coined by Schwartz and his team. He estimates 17.1 million people nationwide have masked hypertenstion.

1/18/2017 1/17/2017 (Education Review) Information Security: Risky Business"We've established information security awareness and training as a priority, and are aligning resources to address it," said Melissa Woo, vice president for information technology and CIO at Stony Brook University and HEISC co-chair. "It helps that we don't have to reinvent the wheel because both the community and vendors already offer usable solutions."

1/18/2017 1/18/2017 (NBC News) Don't Panic Over That Sophie the Giraffe MoldWater and dark, cavernous places are breeding grounds for mold, notes Dr. Saul Hymes, assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at Stony Brook Medicine, but adds that seldom is saliva alone the cause for the growth of mold. "Mold is probably getting in from the environment, not from your kid's mouth," said Hymes. "Where you live, where the toy goes, if there's any mold spores around [are all relevant factors]. It could be as simple as the toy being taken out more and exposed to the mold outside."

1/13/2017 1/12/2017 (Diverse Issues in Higher Education) 2017 Most Promising Places to Work in Student AffairsThe list of 18 most promising places to work in student affairs at a university/college are (in alphabetical order): Bellarmine University; California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo;California State University, Channel Islands; College of William & Mary; Hofstra University; Indiana University Southeast; Lynn University; Miami University; The Ohio State University; Olivet College; Rutgers University-New Brunswick;
Saint Louis University; Shepherd University; Stony Brook University; University of North Carolina at Wilmington;
University of Vermont; University of West Georgia and
Virginia Tech.

1/12/2017 1/12/2017 (5 Towns Jewish Times) News from HANCOn Thursday, January 5, students of the sophomore engineering class at the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County, along with their instructor, Mrs. Victoria Pero, took a trip to Queens College to attend the 20th annual science open house for high-school students presented by Stony Brook University. At the seminar, the students had the opportunity to experience different events related to biology and chemistry.

1/10/2017 1/10/2017 (Morning Sun) Fisher: News Literacy and society's futureRichard Hornik of Stony Brook University reported on a curriculum at that school in New York designed to help students develop the critical thinking skills needed to judge the reliability and credibility of news. These are necessary in the Digital Age, especially with fabricated stories that seem akin to our beliefs.

1/10/2017 1/9/2017 (Chronicle of Philanthropy) Gifts RoundupLalit and Kavita Bahl gave more than $10.2 million to establish the Kavita and Lalit Bahl Center for Metabolomics and Imaging, a cancer-research institute.The money will also go toward hiring four new cancer researchers. Mr. Bahl is a senior research scientist at Renaissance Technologies, an investment-management firm. The couple gave Stony Brook $3.5 million in 2014 for the purchase of a cyclotron, a device used in PET scanning, a technique that allows molecular imaging within the human body.

1/9/2017 1/8/2017 (Wired) How to Build Beautiful 3-D Fractals Out of the Simple EquationsThe 3-D shapes that they build look strange, with broad plains, subtle bends and a zigzag seam that hints at how the objects were formed. DeMarco and Lindsey introduce the shapes in a forthcoming paper in the Arnold Mathematical Journal, a new publication from the Institute for Mathematical Sciences at Stony Brook University. The paper presents what little is known about the objects, such as how they're constructed and the measurements of their curvature. DeMarco and Lindsey also explain what they believe is a promising new method of inquiry: Using the shapes built from polynomial equations, they hope to come to understand more about the underlying equations--which is what mathematicians really care about.

1/6/2017 1/5/2017 (Self Magazine) The U.S. Just Granted Its First Intersex Birth Certificate--Here's What That Means"Basically, when we're embryos, we're all genetically programmed initially to be born as females," Todd Griffin, M.D., chair of the department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive medicine at Stony Brook Medicine, tells SELF. "Then if you have a Y chromosome, that forms testes and produces testosterone and mullerian prohibiting hormone. Those hormones then change your development to go from female to male. If there's any disruption of that--if the hormones aren't made properly or if the cells don't have proper receptors--you get a disruption in that process." That disruption, he says, can cause someone to be born intersex.

1/5/2017 1/5/2016 (New York Times) A Promising Proposal for Free TuitionThe state anticipates that the full-time student enrollment might grow by 10 percent -- but that might underestimate the appeal of a free tuition offer. The lure of free tuition could bring a rush of applicants across the system, particularly to major state university campuses at Buffalo and Stony Brook. And higher enrollment would mean a greater need for classrooms, teachers and faculty advisers.

1/4/2017 1/4/2017 (Fast Company) How To Ditch The Bad Habits That Will Hold You Back This YearMoving from aspiration to achievement takes commitment, but many of us believe talent and luck are sufficient, says Suparna Rajaram, a professor of psychology at Stony Brook University. "Psychological research increasingly shows that grit, a mind-set to learn the needed skills, and sheer practice are necessary ingredients for accomplishing big or small tasks," she says. "When people lose sight of these steps, they look elsewhere to explain why they cannot complete a project on time. A continued pattern of this behavior can make us look outside for explanations, and one outcome of this can result in making excuses."

1/4/2017 1/3/2017 (Quanta Magazine) 3-D Fractals Offer Clues to Complex SystemsThe 3-D shapes that they build look strange, with broad plains, subtle bends and a zigzag seam that hints at how the objects were formed. DeMarco and Lindsey introduce the shapes in a forthcoming paper in the Arnold Mathematical Journal, a new publication from the Institute for Mathematical Sciences at Stony Brook University. The paper presents what little is known about the objects, such as how they're constructed and the measurements of their curvature.

1/3/2017 1/2/2017 (Washington Post) Why does it take so long to recover from pneumonia?Cough is a primary way to clear the gunk. That's why doctors advise pneumonia patients not to take cough suppressants. You want to get that stuff out. It's harder to explain the lingering of symptoms such as fatigue and weakness. "We really don't understand the biology of this," says Norman Edelman, senior scientific adviser for the American Lung Association, who practices medicine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

2/28/2017 2/27/2017 (University Herald) Mid-Tier Universities Boast Of Low-Income Students With Good OutcomesA study from the Equality Opportunity Project revealed that mid-tier universities have higher mobility rates compared to their Ivy League counterparts. Mobility is the term given to describe students from low-income families finishing college and earning more than their parents. It also includes having a better quality of life than their parents...Along with CSU are Pace University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook with an 8.4 percent mobility rate. Pace has an access rate of 15.2 percent and a success rate of 55.6 percent. SUNY Stony Brook, on the other hand, has a 16.4 percent access rate and 51.2 success rate.

2/28/2017 2/27/2017 (Times Beacon Record) Stony Brook University team explores division vs. invasion in fish, worm and cancer -- Part IILast week, the Times Beacon Record Newspapers profiled the work of David Matus, an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Stony Brook University. Matus and Benjamin Martin, who has the same title in the same department, are working together on a new cancer study. While neither Matus nor Martin are cancer biologists, these researchers have experience in developmental biology with different organisms that could contribute to insights in cancer. Specifically, they are exploring the processes that lead to cell division or invasion. Matus is working with the transparent roundworm, while Martin is focusing on the zebrafish.

2/27/2017 2/27/2017 (The Guardian) 'Angry white men': the sociologist who studied Trump's base before TrumpDuring the Obama years, various commentators made wild predictions about the death of the white male as a politically relevant demographic. Then came Trump, propelled to power by a wave of angry white men. The sociologist Michael Kimmel is one of the world's foremost experts on the phenomenon. As the director of Stony Brook University's Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities, he's a leader in the emerging field of masculinity studies. His recent research has looked at topics including spree killers (who are overwhelmingly male and white), as well as the relationship between masculinity and political extremism. He's also just wrapped up a new book studying why men join hate groups - and how they leave.

2/27/2017 2/26/2017 (NPR) Which Colleges Might Give You the Best Bang for Your Buck?A recent study took a look at each college in America and calculated the number of low-income graduates who wound up being top income earners. We call that mobility. The study comes from the Equality of Opportunity Project and is paired with an interactive tool from the New York Times...You can see the earnings outcomes of kids at different colleges. You need to be careful in interpreting that. For example, we see much higher earnings levels for kids who went to Harvard relative to kids who went to a number of other schools. That's not entirely because just going to Harvard is going to raise your earnings dramatically. It's also obviously because Harvard admits a very selective group of students who are likely to do very well no matter where they go to college. But, there are pieces of information that are quite useful. For instance, you see that if you attend Stony Brook University, your earnings outcomes look very similar if you attend Columbia University.

2/22/2017 2/21/2017 (Campus Technology) Mid-Tier Colleges Do Better Job of Upward MobilityAn organization using data to understand how to improve the economic opportunities for low-income people has developed a set of "mobility report cards" to rank universities and colleges by how well their students "climb the income ladder." The mobility rate defined by the Equality of Opportunity Project considers a college's access, the size of the population of students from families in the bottom fifth of income distribution and its success rate in helping those students move into the top fifth of income distribution. Stony Brook University in New York came in second with a mobility rate of 8.4 percent.

2/21/2017 2/17/2017 (FiOS 1) Stony Brook University sees high demand for journalism classTo say that President Trump has been at odds with many media outlets is putting it mildly. On Friday, the president tweeted: "The fake news media is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people!" These sorts of accusations have many people reaching for a refresher on news judgment, which is exactly what one Stony Brook University professor is trying to impart to his students.

2/20/2017 2/15/2017 (Long Island Business News) Preparing tomorrow's scientists yesterday"It's been a long tradition to mentor students, and I keep encountering new professors who are excited to take new students," said Karen Kernan, director of undergraduate research and creative activities at Stony Brook University. "Outreach is what they do; their passion is training the next generation of scientists. Our faculty is willing and open to take students and mentor them; that's why these programs have grown so much."

2/20/2017 1/12/2017 (NCAA Champion Magazine) Something to Talk AboutCollege athletes stage meet-and-greets with young students all the time, but it's rare that the athletes are the nervous ones. That was the case in August, when student-athletes from Stony Brook University in New York met with 30 students from nearby Mill Neck Manor School for the Deaf. Stony Brook is home to a summer sign language course that has proved popular for college athletes -- of 37 students in last summer's class, nine played football, and one was on the track team. Adjunct instructor Melissa Pendergast-Scriven took an opportunity to give the athletes in her class some real-world experience and the deaf school students an up-close look at college sports.

2/15/2017 2/14/2017 (Innovate LI) New Patent, New Partnership For Soaring TraverseWhen a new U.S. patent is your second-biggest announcement of the day, you're probably in a good place. It's all smiles (with healthy teeth, of course) lately at Stony Brook-based Traverse Biosciences, which on Tuesday announced a new patent and a material transfer agreement with what CEO Joseph Scaduto dubbed "a top-10 global animal-health company" - essentially, an agreement to privately test flagship formula TRB-N0224 against a host of animal illnesses.

2/15/2017 2/14/2017 (Times Beacon Record) Stony Brook University team explores division vs. invasion in fish, worm and cancerAt first look, the connection between a roundworm, a zebrafish and cancer appears distant. After all, what can a transparent worm or a tropical fish native to India and the surrounding areas reveal about a disease that ravages its victims and devastates their families each year? Plenty, when talking to David Matus and Benjamin Martin, assistant professors in the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Stony Brook University whose labs are next door to each other. The scientific tandem recently received the 2017 Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award, which includes a two-year grant of $300,000, followed by another renewable grant of $300,000 to continue this work.

2/13/2017 2/10/2017 (Washington Post) Peter Mansfield, Nobel laureate who helped develop the MRI machine, dies at 83Dr. Mansfield had focused his early research on using those principles to identify objects beneath the Earth's surface. But in the early 1970s, he learned that Paul Lauterbur, then at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, had used MRI techniques to produce two-dimensional images. By measuring signals from hydrogen atoms, Lauterbur was able to draw a visual distinction between ordinary water and "heavy water," which has a different atomic structure. He later produced internal images of living clams and mice.

2/9/2017 2/8/2017 (PHYS ORG) Chimpanzee feet allow scientists a new grasp on human foot evolutionAn investigation into the evolution of human walking by looking at how chimpanzees walk on two legs is the subject of a new research paper published in the March 2017 issue of Journal of Human Evolution...now, Nathan Thompson, Ph.D., assistant professor of Anatomy at New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYITCOM), is one of the researchers questioning some long-held ideas about the function and evolution of the human foot by investigating how chimpanzees use their feet when walking on two legs. The research team, including members Nicholas Holowka, Ph.D. (Harvard University); Brigitte Demes, Ph.D. (Stony Brook University School of Medicine); and Matthew O'Neill, Ph.D. (University of Arizona College of Medicine, Phoenix), conducted the research and collected data while all were at Stony Brook University (2013-2015).

2/9/2017 2/9/2017 (Sealy News) Decision-making process of viruses may lead to new treatmentsHumans face hundreds of decisions every day. But we're not alone. Even the tiniest viruses also make decisions, and scientists are researching how they do so, to help lead to better treatments for some diseases...The lambda phage, for example, prefers to destroy E. coli bacteria, which makes it a prime target for researchers. In tracking that target, Zeng's graduate student Jimmy Trinh developed a four-color fluorescence reporter system to track it at the single-virus level. This was combined with computational models devised by Dr. Gábor Balázsi, a biomedical engineer and collaborator at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York, "to unravel both the interactions between phages and how individual phages determine" the fate of a cell.

2/8/2017 2/7/2017 (Times Beacon Record) Stony Brook University's Staller Center continues its 2016-2017 season with dance, acrobaticsAfter a month-long break this holiday season, Stony Brook University's Staller Center returns for the second half of its 2016-17 season with compelling performances. There is something for everybody, and you won't want to miss out on these exciting shows. "The second half of the Staller Center season really shows the diversity of our programs to fill the broad and varied tastes of our students, faculty, staff and greater community," said Alan Inkles, director of Staller Center for the Arts. "Shows range from the world's greatest violinist, Itzhak Perlman, to a spectacular cirque show, "Cuisine & Confessions" featuring aerealists, jugglers and acrobats and boasts a full kitchen where the cast cooks for our audience.

2/8/2017 2/7/2017 (Forbes) Helium And Sodium May Well Have Formed A Compound At High Pressure, But Doubts RemainA few of the unusual instances of helium reactivity took place at high pressure. So it seemed that would be a good way to look for much more stable helium compounds. And indeed, today's claim is about a stable compound between helium and sodium that forms at high pressure. But there's much more to the story. Study co-author Artem Oganov, a professor at Stony Brook University, is an expert at using supercomputers to make predictions about high-pressure chemistry. You might be familiar with his work on boron--Conan O'Brien featured it a few years back. Oganov also directs computational materials discovery at the Moscow Institute of Physics. So he's no stranger to international collaboration. According to Chemistry World magazine, this work started when Xiao Dong, a student from China on an extended visit to Oganov's lab, started running some numbers on helium reactivity. The searches implied that a compound of helium and sodium, Na2He, might be stable at very high pressures, over a million times higher than what we experience on Earth.

2/6/2017 2/3/2017 (Times Beacon Record) Stony Brook University's Davalos Living Her Dream JobWorking with Luis Valente, a postdoctoral researcher at the Natural History Museum of Berlin, Liliana Davalos, an associate professor of conservation biology/ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University, recently determined that the number of species of bats, like the people entering and leaving the bus, remained in relative equilibrium for millions of years over many generations.

2/3/2017 2/2/2017 (Moyers and Company) Making Sense of the News: What Is News?"I (author Michael Spikes) recently wrote a post for BillMoyers.com about an online course developed on Coursera by my colleagues at Stony Brook University and the University of Hong Kong. That course, "Making Sense of the News," presents our model of teaching news literacy -- an academic discipline that, as a subset of media literacy, focuses squarely on understanding news. Over the next few months, I'll highlight some of the concepts covered in the course, using recent news to help you develop your own filter for discerning whether a piece of information merits being called news. To do so, we start at the beginning, looking at what "news" means to us today."

2/3/2017 2/2/2017 (Newsday) Stony Brook medical student-magician charms young patientsStony Brook University's Staller Center for the Arts bring the Instrument Petting Zoo to schools and other locations around Long Island to give young children a hands-on experience with a wide variety of instruments. Staller Center outreach director Paul Newland and Stony Brook University concerts and community education director Michael Hershkowitz and Stony Brook University students showed the charms of playing music to children at North Coleman Road Elementary School in Centereach on Jan. 12, 2017.

2/2/2017 2/1/2017 (Times Beacon Record) North Shore student released after immigration banThe travel ban ordered by President Trump and its hasty roll out impacted Stony Brook University president of Graduate Student Organization, Vahideh Rasekhi, who is pursuing a doctorate in linguistics. According to a statement from university President Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr., Rasekhi was detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport when she arrived back in the U.S. from a trip to Iran to visit her family, though she arrived on a layover flight from Ukraine. She was detained and later released Jan. 29. Stanley addressed Trump's executive order, urging caution from international students, and recommending students from the seven countries listed in the order not travel outside of the U.S. unless absolutely necessary during the 90-day period.

2/2/2017 2/1/2017 (Newsday) Stony Brook president denounces Trump's travel ban at rallyHundreds of Stony Brook University students, professors and staff crowded the plaza in front of the Student Activities Center on Wednesday night to voice full-throated support of the school's international community. President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., addressing the throng, denounced President Donald Trump's executive order barring travel by non-U.S. citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries to the United States and vowed to fight it. "This form of discrimination is fundamentally opposed to the core values of Stony Brook University and the state of New York," he said.

2/1/2017 1/31/2017 (Newsday) Detained Stony Brook University doctoral student 'grateful" for return to schoolIt's back to the books for Iranian-born Vahideh Rasekhi, a doctoral student who's "grateful" for her return to Stony Brook University after being detained at Kennedy Airport for more than a day under the Trump administration's order barring non-U.S. citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries. "I had recently traveled to Iran to visit my family and it was such a blessing to be able to visit with them again," Rasekhi, the president of the campus' Graduate Student Organization, said in a statement Tuesday.

2/1/2017 1/31/2017 (CBS New York) Neil Gorsuch To Visit Capitol Hill Following Supreme Court NominationSome Democrats, still smarting over Trump's unexpected victory in the presidential election, have vowed to mount a vigorous challenge to nearly any nominee to what they view as the court's "stolen seat." President Barack Obama nominated U.S. Circuit Court Judge Merrick Garland for the vacancy after Scalia's death, but Senate Republicans refused to consider the pick, saying the seat should be filled only after the November election. "Democrats are going to give him a lot of trouble," Jeffrey Segal, of Stony Brook University, said. "Democrats are very angry over what Republicans did with Merrick Garland. So it's payback time."

2/1/2017 1/31/2017 (Yahoo Finance) How Trump's immigration order 'dealt a blow to higher education'The ban has affected students like Vahideh Rasekhi, an Iranian who was returning from a trip to visit her family just after Trump issued his order. Rasekhi was initially told that she would not be allowed to enter the US. But with the aid of volunteer lawyers from the International Refugee Assistance Project and the Legal Aid Society, Rasekhi was released over 16 hours later. Rasekhi, a sixth year doctoral student in linguistics, serves as the president of Stony Brook' University's graduate student organization. She came to the US as a Fulbright Scholar at UC Santa Barbara and subsequently received her master's degree in linguistics.

3/28/2017 3/28/2017 (Money and Career Cheat Sheet) The 10 Best Colleges in the US to Become RichCollege is supposed to be the ticket to a better life, but it doesn't work that way for everyone. Some students dedicate years of their lives and buckets of money to earn a degree, only to graduate and find they can't get a job that pays enough to cover their bills. Public, two- and four-year schools in just three states -- New York, California, and Texas -- dominate the list of best colleges for mobility. One private, for-profit college also cracked the top 10. Is your school on the list?...#3 Stony Brook University
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3/27/2017 3/24/2017 (USA Today) Analysts say Trump agenda may not be derailed by health care defeatHelmut Norpoth, a political science professor at Stony Brook University -- and one of the few to predict Trump's win last year -- said he also believes the fate of the bill doesn't presage the failure of the rest of his legislative agenda, and Trump may be better off moving on to his next priority, a tax overhaul. "Clearly the Republican Party as a whole would be much more receptive to vote on tax reform," Norpoth said. "On taxes, I think they're probably more in line with what he wants to do so I don't think they would necessarily torpedo that."

3/23/2017 3/22/2017 (Abilene Reporter-News) Tillerson trip minus media is a mistakeStony Brook University Journalism Professor Jon Friedman writes, "The Trump administration's war with the media has gone global.
"I personally don't need it," Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said dismissively of news coverage during his first diplomatic trip to Asia. Tillerson brought along only Erin McPike, the White House correspondent of the right-tilting Independent Journal Review, not the customary complement of State Department beat reporter."

3/23/2017 3/22/2017 (News12) LI garbage barge of '87 still influences solid waste disposalThis week marks 30 years since the Long Island garbage barge put a spotlight on the problem of solid waste disposal. A Stony Brook University study revealed that the national average of garbage output per person per day is 4.5 pounds. On Long Island, it is nearly double - 7 pounds per person, per day. Professor David Tonjes explains how processing trash on the Long Island has evolved.

3/23/2017 3/22/2017 (Times Beacon Record) Stony Brook University's Lina Obeid finds captive cancer killerMany ways to kill cancer involve tapping into a cell's own termination system. With several cancers, however, the treatment only works until it becomes resistant to the therapy, bringing back a life-threatening disease. Collaborating with researchers at several other institutions, Dr. Lina Obeid, the director of research at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, has uncovered a way that cancer hides a cell-destroying lipid called ceramide from treatments. The ceramide "gets co-opted by fatty acids for a different species of fats, namely acylceramide, and gets stored side by side with the usual triglycerides," Obeid explained in an email about her recent finding, which was published in the journal Cell Metabolism. "It makes the ceramide inaccessible and hence the novelty." The ceramide gets stored as a lipid drop in the cel

3/22/2017 3/21/2017 (Vice) Can Librarians Save Us from Fake News?Howard Schneider, a string bean of a man who speaks emphatically with his hands, has been championing the news literacy cause since 2007, when he founded the Center for News Literacy at New York's Stony Brook University, where he's the dean of the journalism school. "Everybody's kind of discovered this as a phenomenon," said Schneider. "It's been a problem for a while."

3/21/2017 3/20/2017 (New York Times) In an Era of Fake News, Teaching Students to Parse Fact From Fiction"People call me and say, 'Wow, isn't it great that you came up with this course to fight fake news?'" said Howard Schneider, the dean of the Stony Brook School of Journalism and a former editor of the Long Island newspaper Newsday. "It's like those actors who get discovered overnight when they've been working for 10 years. We've been fighting fake news since 2007." But the fight is not just about fake news. "If you define fake news as news that's totally fabricated," he said, "that's only a small part of a much bigger problem, which is this tsunami of information and misinformation, half-truths, advertising masquerading as news and opinion appearing as if it's fact-based. That's the problem, the information stew we're dealing with."

3/20/2017 3/17/2017 (WNBC-TV) NY Man With Cerebral Palsy Headed for Stanford ResidencyA letter in a white envelope pointed the way to Kip Guja's future Friday, one that his mother was unable to imagine when her middle child was born 33 years ago....Guja turned that advice into a way of life, earning a masters degree from Johns Hopkins University. This spring, he'll be awarded both a Ph.D. and a medical degree from Stony Brook University's School of Medicine.

3/17/2017 3-17-2017 (Science Alert) The English Language Managed to 'Organise' Itself Out of Chaos For CenturiesResearchers have found that the English language has effectively organised itself for several hundred years, even without any kind of oversight or control from an official body. Some languages, like Italian and French, are actually controlled by national academies, but a study of texts stretching back almost a thousand years has discovered that English managed to self-organise without this kind of help - even before the arrival of printers and dictionaries. Linguist Mark Aronoff from Stony Brook University says the findings show a kind of 'natural selection' at work, with preferred spellings being decided on by the consensus of English writers over time.

3/17/2017 3/16/2017 (East Hampton Star) Cardiac 'Cath Labs' to Buy Crucial TimeStony Brook University Hospital will oversee the cardiac catheterization and electrophysiology laboratories at Southampton Hospital, and policies and procedures in place at Stony Brook will be incorporated into Southampton's program, she said. "Residents of eastern Long Island will enjoy greater access to timely cardiac care because of the close collaboration and exceptional leadership between Stony Brook Medicine and Southampton Hospital in gaining approval for this new facility," said Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky, the senior vice president of health sciences and the dean of the Stony Brook University School of Medicine.

3/17/2017 3/16/2017 (CNN) Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton: Rescue the arts from the budget chopping blockJulie Andrews and daughter and Stony Brook University director of the Young Artists and Writers Project at Stony Brook University wrote this piece for CNN and stated, "What if there was one activity that could guarantee your kids would do better in school and cope well with life's challenges? And what if this same activity helped them grow up to be lifelong learners, have more success in their chosen career, earn a higher salary and have more fulfilling relationships? What if it even made them more likely to volunteer, be philanthropic, vote -- and ultimately, live longer, healthier, happier lives?In fact, there is such an activity. It is participation in the arts."

3/16/2017 3/15/2017 (NPR's The Salt) I Want To Eat Fish Responsibly. But The Seafood Guides Are So Confusing!All reputable seafood guides are based on science. Take these three for example - Seafood Watch, the Safina Center at Stony Brook University's seafood ratings guide, and the Environmental Defense Fund's Seafood Selector. All three use scientific data from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which relies on a team of more than 20 scientists who weigh factors like fish population, harm to habitat, harm to other species, and management practices to determine the sustainability of a fishery. These factors produce ratings of green (best), yellow (good alternative), or red (avoid). Despite this shared source of data, the guides offer similar but different advice.

3/16/2017 3/15/2017 (Market Watch) American health care has been messed up for a long timeIf modern gripes are to be believed, health care is more expensive and worse than ever. Nostalgia or clear-eyed assessment? Who better to answer the question than Stony Brook University professor Nancy Tomes, who takes a look at a hundred years of American health care in her new book, "Remaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers."

3/15/2017 3/14/2017 (Newsday) Don't stress if you can't afford a prestigious private schoolLeaving high school four years ago, I didn't have the ability to go to a prestigious private school. Now, as I prepare to graduate from Stony Brook University, I don't feel disadvantaged by having attended a state school, but rather empowered by the work I've done and the opportunities I've had...In January, researchers from Stanford, Brown and UC Berkeley gathered to create Mobility Report Cards for universities across the country. They found that low-income students generally fared better at affordable schools than expensive private schools. The report analyzed two main factors -- access and success. Access rates were determined by what percentage of the student population at any given university is from the bottom 20 percent of income distribution. Success was determined by what percentage of those who graduate from that bottom 20 percent go on to become a part of the top 20 percent in the country. Stony Brook University was ranked third for social mobility, due its ability to improve the financial means of those who attend.

3/15/2017 3/13/2017 (Science News for Students) Teen invents a dip to keep germs away"I wanted to create a method that could [add] antibacterial properties to cellulose in a simple way," Jessica Tian, a senior high school student and Regeneron Science Talent Search finalist said. She wanted it to be inexpensive. It also had to be easy to apply on a large scale and pose little risk to the environment. To figure out how to do this, Jessica traveled across the country to spend a summer in the lab of Benjamin Hsaio. He's a chemist at Stony Brook University in New York. The Simons Summer Research Program for high school juniors connected Jessica with Hsaio. "This was the first time I got to work in a lab," she says. "I really enjoyed the whole atmosphere."

3/13/2017 3/13/2017 (Wired) Listen to 'Tech Support' Scam Calls that Bilk Victims Out of MillionsYou probably (hopefully) know better than to dial that number. But three security researchers from the State University of New York at Stony Brook did it anyway. Again and again, for hours on end, they played out the full racket, calling actual human tech-support scammers who patiently, fraudulently "analyzed" their computers' security via a remote connection. Each time, they found it supposedly infected with viruses and spyware, and offered a cleanup for a fee--on average around $300.

3/13/2017 3/11/2017 (Long Island Press) GOP Health Care Plan Raises Serious Concerns For LI and NY, Say Rep. King and ExpertsProfessor Debra Dwyer, a health economist at Stony Brook University in the College of Engineering who specializes in public policy, has been studying the health care issue for some time. She told the Press that she's alarmed by the details she's seen so far in the House Republicans' new plan. "It's kind of amazing to me how they're targeting the vulnerable populations," she said. "They're literally targeting older people and poorer people--those who are more likely to be sick--and their argument is that they cost us more. But the whole reason for having a social welfare network system is to protect the most vulnerable, which is why Medicare came about: to cover the aged and the disabled. Now they're targeting the 50-64 year olds who are going to have to get less in tax credits and pay higher premiums."

3/6/2017 3/4/2017 (Times Beacon Record) Stony Brook University's Schwartz shows prevalence of masked hypertensionThe cardiovascular skies may be clear and sunny, but there could also be a storm lurking behind them. About one in eight people who get a normal reading for their blood pressure have what's called masked hypertension. That's the finding in a recent study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology led by Joseph Schwartz, a professor of psychiatry and sociology at Stony Brook University and a lecturer of medicine at the Columbia University Medical Center. Schwartz said his research suggests that some people may need closer monitoring to pick up the kinds of warning signs that might lead to serious conditions.

3/5/2017 3/5/2017 (Newsday) Donald Trump is a businessman. Will that matter for the economy?Hugo Benitez-Silva is associate professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Economics at Stony Brook University writes, While the financial markets, fueled by the expectations of a business-friendly president who promises lower taxes and fewer regulations, reach record highs, it is too early to tell whether this will be reflected in the real economy."

3/3/2017 3/3/2017 (Business Insider) Fake news experts share 7 tips to separate fact from fictionThis one seems like a no-brainer, but it's essential to actually read an article before letting it form your opinion -- especially if the headline makes an outrageous claim. A recent study found that only 59% of articles shared by Twitter users have actually been clicked, suggesting that many people share links based on the headline alone. "Clicking is a good place to start," Jonathan Anzalone, assistant director of Stony Brook University's Center for News Literacy, told Business Insider.

3/2/2017 3/1/2017 (Southampton Press) Southampton Hospital Merger With Stony Brook Draws NearAfter nearly a decade of discussion, state approval for a pending partnership between Southampton and Stony Brook University is expected soon. Robert Chaloner, Southampton Hospital's president and CEO, said on Friday that although the state's regulatory staff is in the process of reviewing the proposal--which would bring the local hospital entirely under Stony Brook's operating license while preserving the community aspect of the hospital--he expects the state to sign off on the merger within a "matter of days or weeks."

3/2/2017 3/2/2017 (Newsday) Nissequogue, Head of the Harbor villages study rising seasLarry Swanson, associate dean of the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, walks along the shore of Stony Brook Harbor in Stony Brook. Swanson says rising waters will impact the villages of Nissequogue and Head of the Harbor and drastically change conditions in Stony Brook Harbor. Photo Credit: Newsday / John Paraskevas

3/1/2017 2/28/2017 (Triage Cancer Blog) A Model for All Children's HospitalsWe need to talk about how children transition from treatment back to school. There is a lot of discussion about adults returning to work after taking time off to deal with a cancer diagnosis. We talk about the normalcy, the sense of the purpose, and the chance to socialize that work may bring. Well, for these kids, returning to school can mean exactly the same thing. And it also comes with its own degree of challenges. Thanks to Stony Brook Children's School Intervention and Re-Entry Program, there is now a model of how to help children transition from treatment to school.

4/30/2017 4/30/2017 (Quartz) There's no such thing as "mild depression"A consortium of 40 researchers have just unveiled a new system for diagnosing psychological illnesses, as a reaction to the DSM's rigid binaries and random cut-offs. The Hierarchical Taxonomy Of Psychopathology, or HiTOP, was officially unveiled online last month after more than 20 years of discussion and development among researchers, led by scientists at Stony Brook University and University of Minnesota, and including members from University of Notre Dame, Duke University and King's College London, the Broad Institute at Harvard University and MIT, and Purdue University, among others.

4/28/2017 4/27/2017 (Huffington Post) It's Time To Admit That 'Diet' Food Is BogusThere are no quick fixes to be found at the grocery store...'Low-fat' foods and drinks won't help your heart. Products that feature low-fat labels in flashy text aren't really doing anything for your ticker, either. This is especially true for dairy: The message that you need to buy milk that's low in fat is misleading, according to Robert Bobrow, an associate professor of clinical family medicine at Stony Brook University.

4/28/2017 4/27/2017 (Politico Magazine) What the Press Still Doesn't Get About Trump (May/June 2017 issue)Helmut Norpoth, political science Professor at Stony Brook University writes, "During the campaign, almost nobody in the media gave Trump a chance to win the election. That gloomy prospect largely derived from his poor standing in the polls, both nationally and in the major battleground states, with almost no poll showing Trump leading in the three states that clinched his victory in the Electoral College--Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This failure, one might think, would give the media some pause in seizing on polls that now show Trump with low approval, the worst of any president at this stage. But no, polls nowadays feed news coverage that gives Trump little chance to make it through his first term and assumes there's no way for him to avoid a midterm disaster. Granted, presidential approval is not the same as a vote choice, but it is a proven predictor of the vote in midterm and presidential elections. It is odd to see journalists retain their faith in a discredited source instead of questioning its reliability. Shouldn't they instead launch an inquiry into the 2016 polling fiasco?"

4/26/2017 4/24/2017 (CBS News) After the march, science advocates prepare for a marathonLaurie Krug, a scientist who marched in New York City on Saturday, seemed to agree. "I think you're going to see that scientists are going to be more active. We tend to be passive so that we're nonpartisan," said Krug, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology at Stony Brook University in New York, who researches herpes viruses. "And I don't feel like I am partisan, but I feel like I have to keep the STEM [science, technology, engineering, mathematics] field strong and keep young people interested in research."

4/24/2017 4/21/2017 (Innovate LI) With Federal Funding In Doubt, SBU Charity Gala ScoresThe Stony Brook Foundation's message on scientific research: If you want it done, do it yourself. With scientists around the nation marching against President Donald Trump's plans to eliminate federal funding for thousands of laboratory-research programs, the foundation - a registered 501(c)3 and the university's philanthropic backbone - took matters into its own hands this wee

4/20/2017 4/18/2017 (WOSU-FM/NPR) Fake NewsThe epidemic of fake news is relatively new but has already largely impacted the way people consume and disseminate information online. Facebook recently began displaying ways to avoid fake news on its news feeds, but this puts the responsibility on the consumer to avoid fake news, rather than on Facebook to eliminate it from news feeds. Today we'll discuss what fake news is, where it comes from and how it can be avoided. Stony Brook University's Prof. Richard Hornik interviewed.

4/18/2017 4/17/2017 (Innovate LI) Debrief: Hitting The Accelerater With Peter DonnellyNot to be confused with the Accelerate Long Island Seed Fund is the Accelerate New York Seed Fund, an all-new endowment operating under the auspices of nonprofit regional-commercialization booster Accelerate Long Island. Boasting a $6 million war chest ($3 million from Albany and $3 million from private investors, primarily Topspin Partners of Syosset), the new fund takes a wider view, injecting capital into early-stage innovators across Downstate New York. Leading the way is new Accelerate Long Island Executive Director Peter Donnelly, who's also wrapping up his fourth year as director of Stony Brook University's Office of Technology Licensing and Industry Relations. Donnelly, former deputy director of tech development at Argonne National Laboratory, has some highly educated ideas about how the new fund will operate - starting with the notion that Long Island cannot thrive in a commercialization vacuum. His view:

4/18/2017 4/18/2017 (Scientific American) Humans and Technology: From Reshaping Stone to Reshaping Our World (May 2017 issue)In this issue's cover story, "The New Origins of Technology," senior features editor Kate Wong investigates its surprisingly ancient beginnings. Recently Sonia Harmand and her husband, Jason Lewis, both at Stony Brook University, discovered 3.3-million-year-old tools at a site in Kenya called Lomekwi 3. The great age of the implements--far too early to be made by our own species, Homo--is forcing researchers to rethink what they believed they knew about the origins of technology and how incorporating tools into our existence has, in turn, shaped the human family tree.

4/17/2017 4/16/2017 (Wall Street Journal) New York Educators Fear Losing a Coding WhizThe company's founders, however, are concerned they soon may lose one of their biggest assets: Bo Feng, a 31-year-old software engineer whose student visa expires in June. They say Mr. Feng has an unusual knack for upgrading the platform, explaining coding concepts to people of all ages and helping university students hone their skills to land jobs...Mr. Feng, who lives in Centereach, Long Island, came to the U.S. in 2012 to get his master's degree in computer science from New York's Stony Brook University. He has tried unsuccessfully for the past three years to get an H-1B visa. If he doesn't secure one this year, he will have to leave the U.S.

4/14/2017 4/13/2017 (New York Times) After a Soprano's Crisis, a Brünnhilde Is BornAfter a break to work on her piano skills, Christine Goerke enrolled at the State University at Stony Brook in 1989 to take lessons from one of its most celebrated voice teachers, Elaine Bonazzi, recalling: "She immediately said, 'Look, I appreciate that you want to be a chorus teacher. But I really think that you should do this.'"

4/12/2017 4/11/2017 (Fox News Tech) Scientists tout data storage breakthroughScientists are touting a new ultra-thin film technology as a major breakthrough in data storage and processing. Researchers at the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Faculty of Engineering invented the film, which was developed in collaboration with Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University, and Louisiana State University. The film harnesses tiny, swirling magnetic textures called skyrmions that can be used for data storage and processing on magnetic media such as hard drives.

4/12/2017 4/12/2017 (New York Times) Why Americans Vote 'Against Their Interest': PartisanshipWhy do people vote against their economic interests? The answer, experts say, is partisanship. Party affiliation has become an all-encompassing identity that outweighs the details of specific policies...Ms. Mason, along with Leonie Huddy, a professor at Stony Brook University, and Lene Aaroe of Aarhus University in Denmark, conducted an experiment to test the importance of policy. They found that people responded much more strongly to threats or support to their party than to particular issues. They became angry at perceived threats to their party, and enthusiastic about its perceived successes. Their responses to policy gains and losses, by contrast, were much more muted.

4/7/2017 4/6/2017 (Reuters) Women with bothersome menopausal symptoms can seek treatmentWomen who experience vaginal and urinary problems associated with menopause should seek help from their doctors, according to a new patient resource page from the JAMA journal..."Women presume these symptoms are just signs of aging, but they can be corrected by talking to a gynecologist or urologist," said Sardar Khan of Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York, a co-author of the 2016 review.

4/7/2017 4/6/2017 (Washington Post) Colleges turn 'fake news' epidemic into a teachable momentFake news existed long before the 2016 presidential race, in which falsehoods and conspiracy theories played major roles. But "this election has set off alarm bells," says Howard Schneider, executive director of Stony Brook University's Center for News Literacy. As a result, he says, there has been a reawakening of interest in teaching media literacy at colleges and universities. Professors interviewed for this story are teaching students not just to identify "fake news" (a label previously reserved for hoaxes), but to detect bias, missing points of view, misleading slants and economic influences. "We taught everybody to read after we had the printing press," Schneider says. "And now we have to teach everybody these information-vetting skills."

4/6/2017 4/5/2017 (Innovate LI) Advice Abound in Stony Brook University's 2017 Boot CampThese boots are made for talking - and now, several enterprising innovators have a firmer grasp on what to say, and how to say it, when it's time to commercialize the Next Big Thing. Eight "idea champions" with entrepreneurial aspirations have completed Stony Brook University's 2017 Innovation Boot Camp, a commercialization crash course that might not carry ideas directly to the promised land, but does give those inventors - mostly science types with little to no business acumen - a clearer picture of what it takes to go from the drawing board to the board room.

4/6/2017 4/6/2017 (New York Times) 6 Reasons You May Not Graduate on TimeGraduating from a four-year college in four years may sound like a fairly straightforward venture, but only 41 percent of students manage to do it...Unfortunately, the only way to know for sure whether credits will transfer to a new college is to ask. Most administrators will want to review a syllabus from your former school for comparison. And make sure to ask about credits within a major. "Sometimes students just look at how many credits will transfer and make their decisions from there," said Maria Campanella, director of the health sciences office of student services at Stony Brook University of the State University of New York. "What they really need to ask is, 'How many will apply to my degree?' "

4/5/2017 4/5/2017 (PHYS Org) Modeling protein interactions simplified with computer serverProteins are the most abundant substance in living cells aside from water, and their interactions with cellular functions are crucial to healthy life. When proteins fall short of their intended function or interact in an unusual way, these disruptions often lead to disease development. By modeling the structure of protein interactions - a process that has been complicated for researchers for years - scientists gain important insight to many diseases. Stony Brook University-led research team through the Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology has created a user-friendly automated computer server that calculates complex computations of modeling protein interactions with a handful of clicks from a home computer. The resource, available researchers around the world, is detailed in a paper published in Nature Protocols.

4/3/2017 4/2/2017 (Newsday) Equal Pay Day highlights gender pay gapOne of the studies co-authored by professor Julia Bear, who teaches in SBU's College of Business, found that when two equally qualified male and female job candidates were considered, people were more likely to assume the male candidate was the family breadwinner and offered him a significantly higher salary than the female candidate, who was assumed to be in the traditional role of caregiver.

4/3/2017 4/1/2017 (New York Times) Manhood in the Age of TrumpThere are ways in which Donald Trump's life, and his political career in particular, are a burlesque of manhood, "so craven and desperately needy that it has an air of danger and pathos," said Michael Kimmel, a Stony Brook University sociologist and the author of "Angry White Men," a 2013 book that will soon be reissued with a new preface that takes Trump into account.

5/31/2017 5/30/2017 (Pacific Standard) Michael Li's Facination with the Human MindFor Michael Li, a freshman at Princeton University, the human brain is not a mystery so much as an endless source of intrigue. In 2015, when he was still a high school student in rural Maryland, Li was accepted into the Simons Summer Research Program at Stony Brook University, a highly competitive science-research program for high school students. Though he's long had an interest in neuroscience, Li was shocked to be accepted, and says that, afterward, his life changed drastically.

5/31/2017 5/27/2017 (Newsday) Scientists say tick population exploding across Long IslandScientists predict a record year for ticks on Long Island and the rest of the Northeast, and they are attributing the surge to a confluence of phenomena: climate, acorns and mice..."We definitely know that people can be co-infected," said Dr. Saul Hymes, director of the Pediatric Lyme and Tick-Borne Disease Center at Stony Brook Children's Hospital. After identifying specific tick-transmitted agents, patients are treated for more than one infection, he said.

5/26/2017 5/25/2017 (Newsday) Brown tide in Great South Bay is 'troubling sign', expert says"The outbreak of brown tide in this part of Great South Bay this early in the season is a troubling sign for Long Island." said Christopher Gobler, professor of marine science at Stony Brook University. "Given the steady, ongoing rise of brown tide in eastern Great South Bay, Moriches Bay and Shinnecock Bay, the entire South Shore could be 'in bloom' in a matter of days to weeks."

5/23/2017 5/22/2017 (Health Day) Increasing Number of Pregnant Women Also Have Heart DiseaseMany more American women with heart disease are choosing to have babies, a new study finds.Researchers looked at more than 81,000 women with heart disease from 2003 to 2012. They found that the proportion who had babies rose 24 percent during that time. "We learned that in addition to the high and growing prevalence of women with heart disease delivering babies, the reasons are mainly related to increases in women delivering babies with diseases such as cardiomyopathy, adult congenital heart disease, and pulmonary hypertension," study author Dr. Kathleen Stergiopoulos said in a Stony Brook University news release. She is a specialist in heart disease in women at the Stony Brook Heart Institute.

5/19/2017 5/19/2017 (AP) National Lab Receives 15 Million Dollars for Molecular StudyA Department of Energy laboratory has been allocated $15 million by the state of New York for a new microscope - capable of studying objects and life-forms in extremely cold temperatures. The Brookhaven National Laboratory will use this new cryo-electron microscope in collaboration with two other Long Island scientific institutions: Stony Brook University and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

5/18/2017 5/17/2017 (Voice of America) US Campus Uses High-tech Center to Keep Students SafeWhen Hurricane Sandy swept over Long Island, New York, in October 2012, power was knocked out and traffic lights were inoperable. While driving in her car, Stony Brook University student Vishwaja Muppa, 21, was struck by a police car and later died. The death of Muppa, from India, was one of 53 that were blamed on the storm. On Stony Brook's campus, damage was limited and students who sheltered remained safe. But university officials took the hurricane's visit as a wake-up call and planned a state-of-the-art Emergency Operations Center (EOC).

5/16/2017 5/16/2017 (Spectrum) The unexpected plus of parenting with autism"It breaks my heart to even say those words, but that's the message that I've heard: 'Does having autism or Asperger's, does that mean that being a parent is just not a thing for me?'" says Matthew Lerner, assistant professor of psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics at Stony Brook University in New York. The experiences of Hurley and many other parents who are pioneering what it means to be a parent with autism could temper that worry with hope.

5/12/2017 5/12/2017 (New York Times) California Today: The Ubiquitous Bro HugFor millennials, that stigma evaporated in concert with the widening acceptance of homosexuality -- especially in California. "The West Coast has always been a little more huggy," said Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology who specializes in masculinity at Stony Brook University in New York. The reasons for that are complicated. Among the variables are culture, politics, age, race and personal temperament.

5/10/2017 5/9/2017 (Globe and Mail) What online comments can reveal about the person behind the keyboardesearchers are searching for ways in which individuals' social media comments may predict their moods, personalities or various aspects of their health. A big challenge with this, however, is, in order to identify predictive patterns and signals, researchers must be able to compare what individuals say on social media with what is actually happening in their lives, Dr. Park says. One application for which there is great interest for this type of research is to monitor the mental health of consenting patients, says Dr. Andrew Schwartz, an assistant professor of computer science at Stony Brook University in New York State. Mental-health experts often note they lack the time and resources needed to meet the demand for mental-health care, he says.

5/9/2017 5/8/2017 (New York Times) 'Dead Rivers, Closed Beaches': A Water Crisis on Long IslandNitrogen is more harmful to coastal ecosystems than to sources of drinking water. According to Christopher Gobler, a professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, the federal standard for drinking water is 10 milligrams per liter, but anything above one milligram per liter will have an impact on coastal waters. In Suffolk County, the average concentration of nitrogen in groundwater is four milligrams per liter, he said.

5/8/2017 5/5/2017 (InnovateLI) Debrief: Learning As We Go With Imin KaoOn-the-job learning has never been a problem for Stony Brook University engineering professor Imin Kao, who directs the university's Strategic Partnership for Industrial Resurgence and in January succeeded Jeffrey Saelens as executive director of the SBU-anchored Manufacturing and Technology Resource Consortium. Kao, who earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 1991 and has been part of Stony Brook's Department of Mechanical Engineering faculty since 1994, is still learning to juggle his myriad directorial responsibilities - but already revels in the excitement of the business-development arena, particularly regarding Long Island's brilliant biotechnology future.

5/3/2017 5/2/2017 (Inside Edition) Baby Triplets With Rare Skull Disorder Get Life-Saving SurgeriesThe Howard triplets look like members of a wrestling club for 6-month-olds. On their little heads are clear plastic helmets designed to protect their precious noggins while recuperating from skull surgery to correct a rare disorder. They were born with craniosynostosis, a birth defect that causes a baby's skull to prematurely fuse while its brain is still growing. It results in a misshapen head, which can destroy vision and mental development. Surgeons at New York's Stony Brook University Hospital came up with a strategy in January to remove tiny pieces of bone around the babies' soft spots - thereby allowing their heads to grow and expand normally - Amy and Mike Howard said yes.

6/29/2017 6/28/2017 (The Chronicle of Higher Education) Preparing the Neediest for WorkSome colleges that enroll lower-income students have found ways to incorporate career education into programs or even the institution's operations. A couple of years ago, Stony Brook University reimagined its work-study programs and on-campus jobs, using them to emphasize training in work-relevant skills. Marianna Savoca, director of the career center at Stony Brook, which is part of the State University of New York system, says students don't walk around the campus with "low-income" labels on their backs, but students who enroll in work-study programs generally come from families with financial needs. The reorientation of campus work was a way to expand the reach of the career center without having to add people to her office.

6/29/2017 6/28/2017 (MSN) New Study Says We Need To Rethink AgingThe study predicts that population aging will no longer be an issue in the United States by the end of the century. Population aging occurs when there are more older people in a society for a variety of reasons, from decline in births to an increase in life expectancy. "This study is different from previous research in that we used United Nations forecasts that take uncertainty into account and combine those forecasts with our new measures of aging," said Warren Sanderson, PhD, a Professor of Economics at Stony Brook University and lead author, in a statement. "When this is done, it is a virtual certainty that population aging will come to an end in China, Germany, and the U.S. well before the end of the century."

6/29/2017 6/28/2017 (Innovate LI) As Ransomware Attacks Multiply, SUNY Steps UpWith fresh ransomware attacks spreading chaos around the globe, Stony Brook University is stepping up its cybersecurity game. Leveraging $4.5 million in grants issued this week by the SUNY Empire Innovation Program, Stony Brook is engaging an intensive recruitment effort to attract major minds in the fields of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. The stipend from the EIP, a state-funded competitive grant program focused on recruiting and retaining top faculty throughout the SUNY system, will not only bolster an already world-class faculty but "strengthen Stony Brook's research productivity in two high economic-opportunity areas of state and national significance," according to the university.

6/28/2017 6/27/2017 (Medical Daily) You May Not Be As Old As You Think; '70 Is The New 60,' Study SaysThe study predicts that population aging will no longer be an issue in the United States by the end of the century. Population aging occurs when there are more older people in a society for a variety of reasons, from decline in births to an increase in life expectancy. "This study is different from previous research in that we used United Nations forecasts that take uncertainty into account and combine those forecasts with our new measures of aging," said Warren Sanderson, PhD, a Professor of Economics at Stony Brook University and lead author, in a statement.

6/27/2017 6/26/2017 (Scientific American) You've Done the Research: Now Share It with the WorldWe'd like to help more scientists share their expertise with the public. Researchers can apply to take an online course on writing blogs and op-eds for magazines, newspapers and other news outlets from the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, Scientific American and the Kavli Foundation. Science is a global enterprise, with an ambition--and ability--to address some of humanity's most challenging problems. Scientific American, with more than 170 years of authoritative coverage about the progress of science, often authored by the researchers themselves, is delighted to partner with the Alda Center and Kavli on this initiative to support scientists and science communication.

6/26/2017 6/23/2017 (FiOS1) Health experts warn bite from tick now found on Long Island causes meat allergyScientists say the parasite originally came from the south but has since made its way to Long Island and can carry with it a strange condition: an allergy to meat. "You can have vomiting, you can have hives, you can have trouble breathing, you can have your tongue and neck swell up. So it can look like, you know, peanut allergy or any other kind of that allergy like that," says Dr. Saul Hymes of Stony Brook Children's Hospital.

6/26/2017 6/26/2017 (Scientific American) Affordable Catalysts Give Green Vehicles a PushStanislaus S. Wong of Stony Brook University, who works closely with Radoslav R. Adzic of Brookhaven National Laboratory, is among those leading the charge of creating battery-powered electric vehicles that give off no carbon dioxide. He and his colleagues have, for instance, combined relatively small amounts of platinum or palladium with cheaper metals such as iron, nickel or copper, producing many alloyed varieties that are far more active than commercial catalysts. Wong's group has fashioned the metals into ultrathin one-dimensional nanowires (roughly two nanometers in diameter). These nanowires have a high surface area-to-volume ratio, which enhances the number of active sites for catalytic reactions.

6/26/2017 6/24/2017 (Today) Rossen Reports Update: New guidelines limit screen time for kidsDr. Delaney Ruston of Stony Brook University Hospital, director of the film "Screenagers," says that when a child is engrossed in an iPad, tablet or similar device, "it releases a hormone in the brain, dopamine, that is so rewarding, kids want this more and more. And therefore when they are not on these highly stimulating screens, they actually can get really agitated."

6/23/2017 6/22/2017 (Mother Jones) Dozens of EPA Staffers Weigh In on the Damage Trump Has InflictedThe Environmental Data & Governance Initiative is a watchdog group that formed after the election to monitor and archive federal data that many feared might be at risk in the Trump administration. On Monday, a team of EDGI researchers published a report, titled "The EPA Under Siege," based on interviews with 48 current and former staffers. Because these accounts are anonymous, there is no way of knowing how reliable the specific accusations are what any given interviewee's current status at the agency is. But the report offers a snapshot of the confusion and fear that have dominated agency life in the first half-year of Trump's presidency....These dire predictions are coming from seasoned veterans: Christopher Sellers, a Stony Brook University historian who is on the steering committee of EDGI, told me that the report focused on interviews with longtime staff and alumni in order to put the EPA's current state into a historical context.

6/23/2017 6/22/2017 (Futurity) Are you 'old' yet? The cut-off has shiftedAging should be based on the number of years people are likely to live in a given country in the 21st century, say researchers. By that logic, 70 may be the new 60. The new study from Stony Brook University Professor Warren Sanderson also predicts an end to population aging in the United States and other countries before the end of the century.

6/22/2017 6/22/2017 (News12) Dr. Magic: Bringing magic and medicine to sick childrenBridging magic and medicine - one smile at a time - that's the goal of a soon-to-be doctor at Stony Brook Children's Hospital whose medical bag includes a bag of tricks. For kids, a hospital stay can be scary. But at Stony Brook Children's Hospital a magic wand is making it better. David Elkin is a magician and medical student at Stony Brook University. He believes magic helps heal.

6/22/2017 6/21/2017 (PBS NewsHour) For Alan Alda, the heart of good communication is connectionAs an actor, educational TV host and founder of a scholarly center for communication science at Stony Brook University, Alan Alda has used his trademark humor and wit to help others express complicated ideas in accessible language. Now he's written new book called "If I Understood You, Would I Have this Look on My Face?" Alda sits down with Jeffrey Brown to offer a lesson in communication.

6/21/2017 6/21/2017 (Plant Based News) US Health Experts Call On Hospitals To Serve Vegan FoodUS health experts are calling on hospitals to serve plant-based meals - and to cut out processed meats. The American Medical Association - the largest association of physicians and medical students in the United States - wants to see an improvement in the health of patients, staff, and visitors - and has adopted a resolution to that end. The AMA's House of Delegates believes this can be achieved by providing a variety of healthy food - including plant-based meals and meals that are low in fat, sodium, and added sugars, eliminating processed meats from menus, and providing and promoting healthy drinks.
The resolution was co-sponsored by the Medical Society of the District of Columbia and the American College of Cardiology. Stony Brook University Hospital in Stony Brook, N.Y., follows most of the advice outlined by the AMA.

6/21/2017 6/21/2017 (Science Daily) An end to population aging in China, Germany, USAPopulation aging could peak by 2040 in Germany and by 2070 in China, according to a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE, which combines new measures of aging with probabilistic population projections from the UN. In the USA, the study shows very little population aging at all in the coming century...The study combines these new measures with UN probabilistic population projections to produce a new set of age structure projections for four countries: China, Germany, Iran, and the USA. "Both of these demographic techniques are relatively new, and together they give us a very different, and more nuanced picture of what the future of aging might look like," says Warren Sanderson, a researcher at IIASA and Stony Brook University in the USA who wrote the article with Sergei Scherbov, leader of the Re-Aging Project at IIASA, and Patrick Gerland, chief of the mortality section of the Population Division of the United Nations.

6/21/2017 6/21/2017 (Compulsive Reader) Common Denominators: A review of If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on my Face by Alan AldaA life-long interest in science led Alan Alda to engage with various renowned scientists and scientific organizations. This included hosting the acclaimed PBS series "Scientific American Frontiers" that also aired for eleven years. He has played a physicist on Broadway and authored the play Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie. He was named a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2014 for his work helping scientists with communication skills. These converging interests led him to establish the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York where he is also a Visiting Professor.

6/21/2017 6/21/2017 (New York Times) Two New Books Offer Advice for the Socially AwkwardAnd there is a further, more important virtue of "Awkward," which becomes clear when it's compared with another new and somewhat similarly social-scientific interpersonal-relations treatise, with another loose-limbed title that tries too hard to be casual: Alan Alda's "If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?" Alda -- the actor, director, screenwriter, host of "Scientific American Frontiers" on PBS, author of two best-selling memoirs, founder of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, etc. -- here spells out his efforts to help scientists explain their work to laypeople through the methods used in improvisational theater and other techniques. These include consciously mirroring the expressions of people speaking to us (something most of us do unconsciously all the time), as well as storytelling, practicing empathy and so on.

6/20/2017 6/20/2017 (Bloomberg) New York City Planners With Sandy Nightmares Say Barrier May Come Too LateThe warming Atlantic Ocean has raised the risk of another Hurricane Sandy. And still, trillions of dollars of real estate and infrastructure near the shores of New York City and northern New Jersey remain vulnerable to devastation. A storm-surge barrier similar to those in Louisiana and parts of Europe might protect the area, but politicians have questioned its $30 billion cost, effectiveness and environmental impact. A group of scientists, planners and property owners is urging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to accelerate its study of the project. It may take another hurricane to speed up the process. "The danger is increasing as the sea level rises," said Malcolm Bowman, an oceanographer at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, who is among the group. "It won't take a monster storm like Sandy to devastate the region."

6/19/2017 6/15/2017 (Times Beacon Record) Patients dance the night away at hospital promAttending a prom is an important milestone for most teenagers, but for children who are dealing with an illness, they may not always get the chance to experience the rite of passage. Stony Brook Children's Hospital ensured their teenaged inpatients as well as outpatients had the opportunity to enjoy the same special moments their peers do when they held their second annual Children's Hospital Prom June 10. Many of the teenagers were unable to attend this year's school prom or a previous year's, or due to life-limiting illnesses may never have the opportunity.

6/16/2017 6/15/2017 (PM360) Pregnancy and MS: How do they affect each other?Multiple sclerosis has little to no impact on the ability to conceive, on pregnancy, or on fetal status, according to Patricia K. Coyle, MD. "That's very reassuring," Dr. Coyle said at the annual meeting of the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers. "We don't see an increase in birth defects just because the mother has MS. There is no consistent increase in abortions, ectopic pregnancies, or assisted vaginal/cesarean deliveries."

6/16/2017 6/15/2017 (Inverse) Real 'Flatliners' Science Reveals What Death Is Actually LikeWhen Stony Brook Medicine critical care professor Sam Parnia, Ph.D. interviewed survivors of cardiac arrest -- people who were on the "threshold of death" -- he said they reported seeing the bright light as well as animals, plants, family, violent scenes, and flashbacks of the hospital staff working to save them while they were dead. "They mentioned describing a bright and welcoming light, going into a tunnel toward a beautiful place, and seeing relatives welcome them, maybe even a panoramic view of their lives," Parnia told Inverse in a previous interview about his work.

6/16/2017 6/16/2017 (Science) Cocaine Trafficking Is Destroying Central America's ForestsLiliana Dávalos, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, praises the work. "If drug trafficking is destroying forests, they should at least find a correlation, which they do." But she also cautions that the researchers haven't definitively linked the large forest losses to drug trafficking. They could also be coming from subsistence activities or from legal agriculture. To show causation, she says, the researchers would need to have land records, ownership transfer records, and other documents "that [are] very difficult to obtain," especially if that activity is illegal.

6/13/2017 6/12/2017 (The Atlantic) The Plan for 7,000 Bodies Discovered Under a Mississippi CampusBut when the Mississippi State Asylum was first built, it was part of a reform-minded movement to provide better care for the mentally ill. The asylum followed the then novel Kirkbride Plan, an architectural layout devised by the eminent psychiatrist Thomas Kirkbride that was supposed to placate the minds of his patients. Kirkbride believed in sunlight and fresh air, so the wings of the hospital were offset to maximize patients' views from windows and minimize their ability to see each other. At the same time, rooms were laid out so the staff could keep careful watch of the patients. "The optimistic view is that being exposed to this ordered environment would bring you back to sanity," says Nancy Tomes, a historian at Stony Brook University and the author of A Generous Confidence: Thomas Story Kirkbride and the Art of Asylum Keeping. Even if patients were not cured, it was certainly better than staying in jail or being homeless, as the mentally ill often were.

6/12/2017 6/12/2017 (Long Island Business News) Rocking the research departmentow leading the research enterprise at Stony Brook University is Richard Reeder, who first joined the university in 1980 as a faculty member in the geosciences department. Newly promoted to vice president and operations manager of Stony Brook's Research Foundation, Reeder had served as interim vice president for research since last July.

6/12/2017 6/10/2017 (New York Times) Ending the Curse of Remedial MathCUNY Start and ASAP aren't City University's only success stories. Researchers at Stanford, Berkeley and Brown universities have shown that CUNY is a more powerful engine of mobility than almost any university in the nation. Places like CUNY, Stony Brook University and California State University, Los Angeles, are the workhorses of higher education, and they're doing a fine job.

6/9/2017 6/9/2017 (Forbes) This Is How Many Hours Of Sleep Lebron James Gets A Dayndeed, many athletes don't get enough sleep, which is a problem and why Dr. Brian Hainline, NCAA senior vice president and chief medical officer, and the NCAA Sports Science Institute, convened a two-day sleep and wellness summit in Indianapolis last month. For example, consider a study recently presented at SLEEP 2017 (the 31st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies held in Boston) and conducted by researchers at Stony Brook University. The researchers analyzed the late night Twitter activity of 112 NBA players and their subsequent statistics in NBA games over seven seasons from 2009-2010 season through 2015-16. The findings? Late night Tweets may leave NBA players beat, which in turn can get their teams beat. In games following Tweets between the hours of 11 pm and 7 am, NBA players on average scored less (down by one point), shot poorer from the field (by 1.7 percent), and had fewer assists, rebounds and steals. While one point may not seem much, it can mean the difference between a win and a loss in a tight game.

6/7/2017 6/6/2017 (Parade) Alan Alda Wants to Fix Our Failure to Communicatee know and love Alan Alda as the Emmy award-winning actor who starred as Hawkeye Pierce on the classic TV series M*A*S*H*, as well as a slew of other TV and film roles (he was nominated for an Academy Award for The Aviator and recently, we've seen him in the movie Bridge of Spies and Louis C.K.'s comedy-drama web series Horace and Pete). But what Alda really wants us to know is how to better listen to and understand each other. So much so that he's written a new book, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? (Random House), where he shares what he's learned as the host of the PBS series Scientific American Frontiers and the very hands-on founder of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University's School of Journalism.

6/7/2017 6/6/2017 (Sports Illustrated) Late-night tweeting linked to weaker NBA performanceProfessional basketball players who sent tweets between 11 p.m and 7 a.m. the night before a game scored on average 1 point less and their shooting accuracy dropped by 1.7 percentage points compared with their performance in games that did not follow late-night tweeting, according to a study by Stony Brook University that was published in SLEEP, the official journal of the Sleep Research Society.

6/6/2017 6/5/2017 (New York Post) How late night tweeting could hurt your job performanceSo what's going on here? The researchers think that this has to do with players getting less sleep than they should. And, "Our findings are relevant beyond just sports science research," says study co-author Lauren Hale, a professor at Stony Brook University. "Our results demonstrate a broader phenomenon: to perform at your personal best, you should get a full night of sleep."

6/6/2017 6/5/2017 (Innovate LI) A Stony Brook University Sweep In Bioscience Hub's Latest RoundFive research projects targeting advanced medical-imaging applications, computer-based drug discoveries and a range of new pharmaceutical treatments will be backed by the Long Island Bioscience Hub. The Center for Biotechnology at Stony Brook University, on behalf of the LIBH, is scheduled to announce Tuesday the fourth funding round of the Hub's technology-commercialization initiative. This time around, a total of $400,000 has been earmarked for two "feasibility" and three "proof of concept" awards, each backing biomedical innovations in various stages of development.

6/6/2017 6/5/2017 (Los Angeles Times) If there was ever life on Mars, Gale Crater could have hosted a variety of microbes, study saysScientists with NASA's Mars Curiosity rover mission have found that Gale Crater had the right physical and chemical conditions for life for 700 million years -- and for part of that history, held a lake that could have hosted a wide variety of microbial life.The findings, published last week in the journal Science, document a long-lasting Martian environment that had the potential to host a wide variety of living things."It helps to broaden our understanding of what it meant to be a habitable environment on Mars, 3 ½ billion years ago," said lead author Joel Hurowitz, a geochemist at Stony Brook University.

6/2/2017 6/1/2017 (Reader's Digest) 9 Signs Your “Heartburn” Is Actually AllergiesWith GERD and EoE sharing so many symptoms, how do you know which one you have? If you tend to experience these symptoms in spring and summer and you don't get any relief from antacids or acid-suppressing drugs, ask your doctor to order an endoscopy to see just how irritated your esophagus is. "When I see a patient having difficulty swallowing or pain without swallowing, it can often be EoE," says Alexandra Guillaume, MD, a gastroenterologist at Stony Brook University Hospital in New York. "It happens when the eosinophils--reacting to some sort of allergy--overwhelm the esophagus, leading the esophagus itself to become spastic. This makes it difficult for patients to swallow."

6/2/2017 6/1/2017 (NBC News) Alan Alda: Empathy Can Save Science, Politics and DiplomacyActor Alan Alda said he was twice approached on the set of the M*A*S*H by political organizers pleading him to run for office - but he turned down the offer to launch a U.S. Senate bid because he didn't have any experience.
"I said 'Why? I'm not experienced at that. I probably wouldn't be good at that.' And they said, 'Yeah, but you can get elected.' So that's the criteria, I guess," Alda told Chuck Todd on "1947: The Meet the Press Podcast."
"That's not my talent. My talent is what I am trying to do."
The Emmy Award winner has built a second career for himself as a communications expert: He participated in the creation of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, and he's now out with a new book, "If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?"

6/2/2017 6/1/2017 (Nature) Life could have survived in Mars craterNASA's Curiosity rover has been exploring Gale Crater on Mars since 2012, and has collected data showing many chemical variations in the crater's sedimentary rocks. A team led by Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University in New York analysed the data and conclude that older rocks seem to have formed in relatively cold climates. By contrast, younger sediments suggest that environmental conditions were warmer and wetter. The crater could have been hospitable to life between 3.8 billion and 3.1 billion years ago, not long after it was first formed.

7/28/2017 7/28/2017 (Innovate LI) State To Fund $75M Med Research Center At Stony Brook UniversityStony Brook University has been awarded a $75 million state grant to build a center to develop and commercialize medical devices and treatments. The 70,000-square-foot building, to be called I-DIME, for the Institute for Discovery and Innovation in Medicine & Engineering, will be built adjacent to university's wireless technology and advanced energy centers. It is expected to open in 2021.

7/28/2017 7/27/2017 (Dotemirates) : A tiny part of the brain could orchestrate the whole body's aging, suggests a mouse studyWhy do we age? It's a seemingly simple question that nonetheless scientists don't have a great answer to. Some amount of aging seems to be controlled by our genetic makeup, while other evidence shows that our cells have an upper limit to how many times they can divide...Grigori Enikolopov, professor of developmental genetics at Stony Brook University, said that they could -- though any leap from mouse studies to human therapies comes with, "many, many disclaimers." Still, "if you take neural stem cells from a particular person ... in principle, you could get them to secrete [exosomes], collect them, and introduce them back into the brain," he said.

7/28/2017 7/27/2017 (Long Island Business News) Plastic surgery group teams up on residency programNassau University Medical Center, Stony Brook Medicine and Long Island Plastic Surgical Group have teamed in an unusual private-public partnership to offer a plastic surgery residence. The program including private practice, one of the largest private practices of its kind in the nation, has received national accreditation and is about to get under way. The national Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education approved the joint residency program.

7/27/2017 7/26/2017 (STAT) A tiny part of the brain appears to orchestrate the whole body's agingBut a new study points to a different player: a special population of cells in a tiny region of the brain. Middle-aged mice that got an infusion of stem cells to the hypothalamus -- the hormone-releasing center of the brain -- had less memory loss and longer lives than normal mice, indicating that the hypothalamus plays a role in whole-body aging....So, could such a finding point a way toward a human fountain of youth? Grigori Enikolopov, professor of developmental genetics at Stony Brook University, said that they could -- though any leap from mouse studies to human therapies comes with, "many, many disclaimers."

7/26/2017 7/25/2017 (InnovateLI) For Startups Seeking Capital, The Name Is No GameA new study by researchers from Stony Brook University, Drexel University and Villanova University explores the effects of "name fluency" on investors - that is, the familiarity, uniqueness and phonetic influence of a company name, and how venture capitalists tend to react. By exploring "the two ways you can evaluate a name, two kinds of fluency," the study aims to be a resource to entrepreneurs and investors alike, according to co-author Richard Chan, an assistant professor in SBU's College of Business who conducted the research with Drexel professor Haemin Park and Villanova professor Pankaj Patel.

7/26/2017 7/26/2017 (Traveler Watchman/The Independent) Anything But Blue: Toxic Tides Taking HoldThis article written by Stony Brook University's SoMAS Professor Chris Gobler explores why, "more and more surface waters on eastern Long Island are taking on colors that signal something is not right. The green lake or pond, the chocolate-colored bay; these are not the images we bring to mind as we dream about our favorite water activities. Yet, these conditions are now ever-present across the East End during summer. And if the concerns ended with a discoloration of the water, one might chalk it all up to a bad day at the beach and move on. However, the fact of the matter is, these discolorations are often caused by algae that are harmful to aquatic life, pets, and even humans. Moreover, the formation of these harmful algal blooms or HABs have been shown to lead to economic disruption in communities that rely on clean water for tourism, fisheries, and boating and have been shown to significantly depress home values in a one mile radius. Just about everyone should be concerned."

7/25/2017 7/24/2017 (Live Science) Facts About UraniumUnderstanding how nuclear fuels act when they melt is crucial for nuclear engineers building containment vessels, said John Parise, a chemist and mineralogist at Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory. In November 2014, Parise and colleagues from Argonne National Lab and other institutions published a paper in the journal Science that elucidated the inner workings of melted uranium dioxide, a major component of nuclear fuel, for the first time. Uranium dioxide doesn't melt until temperatures top 5,432 F (3,000 C), so it's hard to measure what happens when the material goes liquid, Parise told Live Science -- there's just no container tough enough.

7/25/2017 7/25/2017 (WBUR/NPR) 'A Better Deal' For Democrats?It's been a rough patch for Democrats. In the last few years they've lost majority control on Capitol Hill. They've lost the White House to Donald Trump. They've lost sway over the future of the Supreme Court. And they've lost the confidence of many that they were the effective voice of the little guy in the U.S. economy. Yesterday, Democrats rolled out a new appeal. They call it a "better deal." It's their comeback cry, they hope. This hour On Point: The Democrats' "better deal." Guest include: Stephanie Kelton, economics professor at Stony Brook University. Consultant on the Democrats' "A Better Deal" policy agenda. Former economic advisor to Bernie Sanders. Former chief economist for Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee. (@StephanieKelton)

7/25/2017 7/25/2017 (Forbes) Alan Alda Shares Indispensable Communication Insights From His Life As An ActorAlan Alda has earned international recognition as an actor, writer, and director, having won seven Emmy Awards, received three Tony nominations, is an inductee of the Television Hall of Fame, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in The Aviator. Alda is the founder of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University and Alda Communication Training and the author of three bestselling books: Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned, Things I Overheard While Talking To Myself, and his new book, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?

7/21/2017 7/21/2017 (New York Times) Partisan Conflict Is High, but the Market Doesn't CareThe United States is so sharply divided that political consensus appears to fray almost daily. Yet two truths about politics can be demonstrated with hard numbers. The first is that partisan conflict doesn't just seem to have become more intense this year: It has actually reached new levels of nastiness. The second is that the stock market simply doesn't care. In fact, the rising acrimony has been a fine environment for stocks, though possibly detrimental to the economy itself. Nearly everything is quantified these days: how much we eat, how frequently we exercise, how much time we spend glancing at a Facebook post or reading an article. In the age of Big Data, why not measure trends in political vituperation? The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia is doing just that. It maintains a monthly Partisan Conflict Index, building on the work of Marina Azzimonti, formerly a research economist with the Philadelphia Fed and now an associate professor at Stony Brook University. The monthly index peaked in March and remains at historically high levels.

7/21/2017 7/20/2017 (Newsday) Long Island added 21,500 jobs in JuneJohn A. Rizzo, a Stony Brook University economics professor and chief economist for the Long Island Association trade group, said the sector's strong numbers reflect high consumer confidence here. A Siena College Research Institute survey released earlier this month showed rising consumer confidence for the metro region, including Long Island. Consumer confidence rose to 93.3 points in June, from 92.4 points in March. "Consumers are more confident," Rizzo said. "They are spending more, and the leisure and hospitality sector seems to have been anticipating that as evidenced by their strong hiring."

7/20/2017 7/19/2017 (WSHU) Stony Brook Film Festival Showcases Female FilmmakersThe 22nd annual Stony Brook Film Festival gets underway Thursday. Over the next ten days, the Staller Center for the Arts at Stony Brook University will host 36 features and shorts on a 40-foot screen in front of a thousand seats. This year, nearly half of the selected films were written, directed or completely made by women. Alan Inkles, director of the Staller Center and founder of the Stony Brook Film Festival, said, "So we've become a real international festival, with I think 18 or 19 countries represented this year, and a lot of these filmmakers are coming out [to Stony Brook] this year. We have filmmakers from Israel coming, from Armenia, from Latvia, from Bulgaria and France and of course, a lot of American filmmakers who will be here for their screenings."

7/20/2017 7/19/2017 (CNN) Your dog descended from Late Stone Age wolves, study saysThey shed light on the fact that domesticated dogs living 7,000 years ago, alongside some of the first European farmers, are the ancestors of the dogs kept as pets around the world today, said Krishna Veeramah, study author and genetics professor at Stony Brook University. Dogs and humans may have had a similar relationship as far back as 14,000 years ago in hunter-gatherer communities.

7/19/2017 7/19/2017 (Scientific American) Untangling the Mystery of How Fido Became Humankind's Best FriendIn a paper published this week in Nature Communications Krishna Veeramah at Stony Brook University and colleagues argue that dog domestication occurred once, sometime between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago. Early efforts at nailing down the time and place of domestication varied wildly. One set of analyses published in the late 1990s suggested dogs and wolves diverged some 135,000 years ago in the Middle East. A 2009 paper placed the divergence much more recently, at 16,300 years ago in southern China. Others have located the series of events that led to canine domestication in Europe, rather than the Middle East or Asia.

7/19/2017 7/18/2017 (CBS New York) Seaweed Stench Sucks The Fun Out Of Going To The Beach In Point LookoutMarine biologists from Stony Brook University blamed the nearby Bay Park Sewage treatment plant -- treated waste expelled into the bay causes seaweed to grow out of control, and it's not just a nuisance."These things are harmful to marine life, particularly early life stages of shellfish, and we also know when they get up on the beach and begin to rot, they can release sulfite fumes that can be an irritant to eyes and lungs," Dr. Chris Gobler, Stony Brook University said.

7/18/2017 7/18/2017 (International Business Times) Humans first domesticated dogs up to 40,000 years ago, fresh research showsThe genetic study of ancient and modern dog remains is just in its infancy and many more investigations will be needed to shed all the light on the issue of dog domestication. "Genomic analysis of ancient samples is a relatively new field, we are just at the beginning. To settle the issue of when and where dogs were first domesticated, we would need older samples from other geographical regions," study first author Laura Botigué, from Stony Brook University (USA), told IBTimes UK. "Most of the analyses that have been done up to now were based on modern samples but now almost everyone agrees that's not how we'll get a straight answer about the origins of domestication. We need older samples as well". What is certain is that the debate will continue to find out more about the history of the relationship between men and their favourite pets, and that this research will likely continue to fascinate both scientists and members of the public. "A lot of people can relate with this aspect of animal evolution as they have pets as well but most of all this kind of study is fascinating from an anthropological point of view to see how humans played a key role in the evolution of wolves into dogs as far back as 40,000 years ago, it's fascinating to learn more about this process,"Botigué said.

7/18/2017 7/17/2017 (East Hampton Star) Georgica Pond Opened for ShellfishingFour weeks after they ordered Georgica Pond closed to the harvesting of crabs and other marine life due to a report a toxic blue-green algae from Suffolk officials, the East Hampton Town Trustees reopened the pond as the algal bloom had significantly diminished....Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences has been monitoring the pond's water quality for the trustees for several years. More recently, the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation, a group of pondfront property owners that is working to restore it to health, also retained his services. "Historically, blue-green algae blooms tend to show a bimodal summer distribution, peaking in late spring and again in later summer into fall," Dr. Gobler wrote in an email to The Star on Thursday. "In 2014 and 2015, blooms occurred in August and September. So, while the overall conditions are basically ripe for a bloom, the absence of one right now is actually consistent with prior years (excluding 2016) and other locations on the South Fork."

7/17/2017 7/16/2017 (Futurity) Rotating keyboard lets you 'type' on your watchAs stated in the research paper outlining the COMPASS design and implementation, an advantage of the circular layout is that unlike conventional QWERTY keyboards T9 keyboards (the keyboard on the Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch), is that it allows the remaining screen area to be in a round shape. Therefore, the screen contents can be scaled to fit in the inner area without changing the look-and-feel. The study's coauthors are from Stony Brook University, Tsinghua University (Beijing), the Key Laboratory of Pervasive Computing, and the Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology.

7/17/2017 7/15/2017 (HuffPost) 15 Lessons From The Most Social CIOs in Higher EducationMelissa Woo is the Senior Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer for Stony Brook University. She previously worked at the central IT organizations at the University of Oregon, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Woo is very active in higher education professional organizations such as EDUCAUSE and Internet2. Woo was the recipient of the EDUCAUSE Rising Star Award, which recognizes an emerging leader in higher education IT whose record reflects ongoing and exceptional growth in contribution to the profession and increased levels of leadership and responsibility. You can follow Woo on Twitter at @mzyw. She said, " Successful people work outside of their job descriptions - Woo's career path to becoming an extraordinary CIO started when she began to improve communication barriers in business, and getting people to communicate with each other, taking on assignments in IT that was outside her official job description. By leaning into technology to further improve collaboration and communication within her organization and company, Woo was able to bolster her technical and leadership skills."

7/14/2017 7/13/2017 (Everyday Health) 10 Essential Facts About Primary-Progressive MSThere's often no easily identifiable pattern of symptoms in PPMS. While relapsing forms of MS tend to cause an acute neurological episode that's hard to ignore, the onset of PPMS "is much more gradual and insidious," according to Patricia K. Coyle, MD, neurologist and director of the Multiple Sclerosis Comprehensive Care Center at Stony Brook University School of Medicine in Stony Brook, New York. Classic symptoms of PPMS, according to Coyle, include difficulty walking, leg weakness, and muscle spasticity. But because the onset of these symptoms is gradual, "People are more apt to write it off as, 'I'm getting older, I'm getting clumsier,'" says Dr. Coyle. "I think it's very easy to miss it for a period of time."

7/14/2017 7/13/2017 (Huffington Post) States Should Require Schools To Teach Media Literacy To Combat Fake NewsThe State University of New York at Stony Brook created the Center for News Literacy in 2006, which teaches undergraduate students how to use critical thinking skills to judge the reliability and credibility of news reports and news sources. The center has developed curricula for high schools and the public through the Digital Resource Center. It organizes national conferences on news literacy and started a high school teacher training program in order to bring news literacy courses to classes across the nation. Elements of Stony Brook's media literacy courses have spread to several dozen other American campuses and several countries. After summer training sessions at Stony Brook, the principal and staff at a Coney Island public middle school implemented a program to encourage students to become smarter readers and news analysts.

7/14/2017 7/13/2017 (New York Times) Living Another Day, Thanks to Grandparents Who Couldn't SleepLauren Hale, a professor of family population and preventive medicine at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, said the findings highlighted important social aspects of sleep, which still persist today. But she cautioned that the link might not be entirely biological. "The variation may be partially explained by genetics," she said, "but there are environmental conditions too." As people age, their social needs and level of activity change, potentially affecting their sleep patterns.

7/13/2017 7/13/2017 (Long Island Pulse) A Whale of an IslandAn increased population would be good news for Long Island: it's a sign of a healthy eco-system. "Most whales are apex predators so they're at the top of the food chain," said Joseph Warren, an associate professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Studies at Stony Brook University. "If you've got enough food to supply all the way up the food chain, that's a good thing."

7/12/2017 7/11/2017 (Innovate LI) Three Island Schools Crack Money's 'Best' RanksThree Long Island institutions of higher learning are among the nation's best bangs for your educational buck, according to a popular annual ranking. Applying 27 data points to 2,400 U.S. colleges and universities - including tuition rates, percentage of students earning grants and estimated salaries upon graduation, among others - Time Inc.'s Money Magazine came up with 711 entries for its Best Colleges for Your Money 2017 list. The list spotlighted 77 schools from across New York State, including three on Long Island: Stony Brook University (ranked No. 54 overall), Rockville Centre's Molloy College (No. 96) and Garden City-based Adelphi University (No. 303).

7/10/2017 7/10/2017 (Philadelphia Inquirer/Philly.com) What's the return on your Pa. or N.J. college investment?Not surprisingly, Ivy League universities have the highest success rates, with almost 60 percent of students from the bottom fifth reaching the top fifth. But less selective schools also have comparable success rates while offering much higher levels of access to low-income families. For example, 51 percent of students from the bottom fifth reach the top fifth at New York state school SUNY-Stony Brook. Because 16 percent of students at Stony Brook come from the bottom fifth, compared with 4 percent at the the Ivys, Stony Brook has a bottom-to-top-fifth mobility rate of 8.4 percent, substantially higher than the 2.2 percent rate on average at Ivy League colleges

7/7/2017 7/6/2017 (Money) The Hobby Lobby Case Shows Why Smuggling Ancient Artifacts Is Hugely ProfitableHobby Lobby, an Oklahoma-based arts and crafts retailer, agreed Wednesday to pay a $3 million fine after federal prosecutors alleged the company illegally imported thousands of ancient clay artifacts originally from Iraq into the United States..."Anyone who buys antiquities who do not have a guarantee that they were legally exported from the country of origin is contributing to the smuggling of archeological sites," said Elizabeth Stone, a professor of anthropology at Stony Brook University and an expert on antiquities of Iraq and ancient Mesopotamia.

7/7/2017 7/6/2017 (New York Times) Trump and Putin Meet in Testosterone-Fueled Face-OffEven with the long history of swagger, this Russian-American meeting stands out. "It's as old as American politics and yet it feels new in this iteration," said Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology and gender at Stony Brook University and the author of "Angry White Men." "Everything is a manhood test. Even CNN has to be wrestled into the ground in a fake match, not a real one. To me, that's the metaphor, the WWE. It's two hyper-idealized versions of masculinity getting into the ring. Everyone loves the over-the-topness of the pretense, because everyone knows no one can get hurt. In this case, someone could get hurt."

7/7/2017 7/1/2017 (Vox) Trump and Pruitt are the biggest threat to the EPA in its 47 years of existenceThis article was written by Stony Brook University History Professor Christopher Sellers It's been quite a week for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. On Thursday, we learned -- thanks to reports in Climatewire and the New York Times -- that he met with coal executives and lobbyists at a meeting of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and promised them "red team, blue team" exercises to evaluate climate science. (The broad consensus among scientists and other climate experts is that such debates are wholly unnecessary, given that we already have excellent systems in place to vet climate science, and that the fundamentals of climate science are incontrovertible at this point.) It was a clear signal that Pruitt intends to take government-sanctioned climate skepticism to the next level.

8/31/2017 8/31/2017 (The Atlantic) The Myth of American Universities as Inequality-FightersThe true mobility champions of higher education are the colleges that both accept lots of low-income students and send them to the upper quintile of earnings at relatively high rates. These schools are mostly mid-tier public institutions, like State University of New York at Stony Brook, where 16 percent of students are from the bottom quintile, more than four times the Ivy League average. Other all-stars in this category include California State University in Los Angeles, Pace University in New York, and South Texas College.

8/25/2017 8/25/2017 (News12) Stony Brook University offers gender-neutral dormsStudents began moving into their dorms Friday at Stony Brook University, and a growing number are choosing to live in gender-neutral housing. Senior Derrick Wegner says he was a bit nervous when he first arrived at the school. As a transgender man, he says he was relieved to find gender-inclusive housing on campus.

8/25/2017 8/24/2017 (Phys Org) New computational model of chemical building blocks may help explain the origins of lifeScientists have yet to understand and explain how life's informational molecules - proteins and DNA and RNA - arose from simpler chemicals when life on earth emerged some four billion years ago. Now a research team from the Stony Brook University Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory believe they have the answer. They developed a computational model explaining how certain molecules fold and bind together to grow longer and more complex, leading from simple chemicals to primitive biological molecules. The findings are reported early online in PNAS .

8/24/2017 8/23/2017 (Newsday) Expert: Rust tide bloom off East End could kill finfish, shellfishRust tide, a type of algae that can kill finfish and shellfish, is blooming in parts of Shinnecock and Quantuck bays as well as portions of the Peconic Estuary on the East End. Low levels of the algae, known as Cochlodinium polykrikoides, have been present since July and heavy rains on Aug. 17 fueled an "explosion in cell densities," according to Chris Gobler, a professor at Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences

8/21/2017 8/21/2017 (USA Today) Bro culture is under attack, but women say it's far from tamedAt its core, bro culture aims to create a space where boys can be boys, says Michael Kimmel, founder and director of the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities at Stony Brook University and author of Angry White Men: Masculinity at the End of an Era. What we mean when we say 'bro culture'? "It's a reaction against the entry of women into virtually every public space, which they see as an invasion," he says. "Once upon a time, every place was a locker room." Kimmel also warns of a toxic byproduct of this culture that extends beyond women. Men who aren't drawn to the code -- the teasing, the boasting, the drinking -- can be pressured to "compromise their own values in the name of fitting it with bros," he says, adding that the pressure to conform can be intense.

8/21/2017 8/19/2017 (Newsday) Ranking U.S. colleges: More lists than ever, with eye on value"I don't think any of the leading institutions in the country have gotten where they are by managing to the rankings," said Stony Brook University President Samuel L. Stanley. "We don't change a lot based on the rankings. Having said that, there are some measures we look at, particularly on outcomes, and we pay attention to them to the extent that they give us independent validation."

8/18/2017 8/18/2017 (Long Island Pulse) See a Total Solar EclipseLong Islanders will be able to see a partial solar eclipse on Monday, August 21, 2017. It will begin at 1:23pm, reach its peak around 2:44pm and end at 4pm. On vacation? NASA's interactive map has more time predictions. Where can I watch it? "Anywhere you can see the sun," said Fredrick Walter, an astronomy professor at Stony Brook University. "On Long Island, about 24 to 25 percent of the sun will still be visible."

8/17/2017 8/17/2017 (Long Island Business News) Researcher seeks to boost Native Americans' STEM studiesThe W.M. Keck Foundation has awarded a three-year, $300,000 grant to the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement program at Stony Brook University to improve STEM teaching to Native Americans. This is the second grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation that Stony Brook has announced in a few days, following a $1 million grant to study how the nutrition of brain neurons affects cognition in aging human beings.

8/16/2017 8/16/2017 (Innovate LI) Neurons, STEM Studies Part Of Keck Foundation GiftsA Los Angeles foundation on a medical-science mission has doubled down on Stony Brook University. The W.M. Keck Foundation - established in 1954 by its namesake, founder of the Superior Oil Co. - has awarded a three-year, $1 million grant to SBU researchers studying the nutrition of brain neurons and how it affects cognition in older populations.

8/14/2017 8/14/2017 (The Hill) No country for neophytes: Angela Merkel will win Germany againHelmut Norpoth is a professor of political science at Stony Brook University. He developed the "Primary Model," a statistical model he uses to predict the results of United States presidential elections based on data going back to 1912. He accurately predicted the election of Donald Trump to the presidency in March 2016. He co-wrote this article with Professor Thomas Gschwend.

8/14/2017 8/11/2017 (New York Times) Scott Pruitt Is Carrying Out His E.P.A. Agenda in Secret, Critics Say"There's a feeling of paranoia in the agency -- employees feel like there's been a hostile takeover and the guy in charge is treating them like enemies," said Christopher Sellers, an expert in environmental history at Stony Brook University, who this spring conducted an interview survey with about 40 E.P.A. employees.
Such tensions are not unusual in federal agencies when an election leads to a change in the party in control of the White House. But they seem particularly bitter at the E.P.A.

8/11/2017 8/10/2017 (Scientific American) Do You Hear What I Hear? Auditory Hallucinations Yield Clues to PerceptionNormally when the brain receives sensory information, such as sound, it actively works to fill in information to make sense of what it hears--its location, volume and other details. "The brain is a predictive machine," explains Anissa Abi-Dargham, a psychiatrist at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the new work. "It is constantly scanning the environment and relying on previous knowledge to fill in the gaps [in] what we perceive." Because our expectations are usually accurate, the system generally works well. For example, we are able to hear the sound of running water or the murmur of a friend talking across the room and then react in an instant, Abi-Dargham says.

8/10/2017 8/9/2017 (Reuters) Infant ape fossil skull illuminates humankind's remote pastThe lemon-sized fossil skull of an infant ape nicknamed Alesi that inhabited a Kenyan forest about 13 million years ago is offering a peek at what the long-ago common ancestor of people and all modern apes may have looked like...."I appreciate just how difficult it is to find something like this. So when we found this, I was over the moon. I still am over the moon," said paleontologist Isaiah Nengo of New York-based Stony Brook University's Turkana Basin Institute and California's De Anza College.

8/8/2017 8/8/2017 (Science News) Neutrino experiment may hint at why matter rules the universeA new study hints that neutrinos might behave differently than their antimatter counterparts. The result amplifies scientists' suspicions that the lightweight elementary particles could help explain why the universe has much more matter than antimatter...Even three sigma is still far away -- T2K could reach that milestone by 2026. A future experiment, DUNE, now under construction at the Sanford Underground Research Laboratory in Lead, S.D., may reach five sigma. It is worth being patient, says physicist Chang Kee Jung of Stony Brook University in New York, who is a member of the T2K collaboration. "We are dealing with really profound problems."

8/8/2017 8/7/2017 (Yahoo Singapore News) Researchers demonstrate the limits of driverless car technologyResearchers at the University of Washington, Stony Brook University, and UC Berkeley have shown how much work still needs to be done on driverless technology, by blowing a big hole in one key part of autonomous-drive systems -- road-sign recognition.
While we already have vehicles with systems capable of reading road signs, the researchers showed how easy it is to hack the systems into interpreting the information shown on road-signs incorrectly, using nothing more complex than a few well-placed stickers.

8/7/2017 8/7/2017 (Hamptons.com) Stony Brook Southampton Hospital's 59th Annual Summer Party Raises Over $1.5 MillionIt was a "ta da" moment at the Southampton Hospital's 59th Annual Summer Party. "We formally joined with Stony Brook on Tuesday," President and CEO Robert S. Chaloner told Hamptons.com on the lawn leading to the air conditioned tents that house the gala, where socialites preened for admiring cameras. "We're now officially Stony Brook Southampton Hospital! It will be an opportunity to bring all of their resources and skills together with all the great things about Southampton Hospital. So, this party marks a summer when so much is happening. Tonight, we have a large team of people who have joined us from Stony Brook, and the decor and food are just stunning."

8/3/2017 8/2/2017 (Becker's Hospital Review) Southampton Hospital joins Stony Brook MedicineHospital, hereafter called Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, finalized an agreement to join Stony Brook (N.Y.) Medicine. By joining forces, the organizations aim to improve healthcare quality and access. The two provider organizations will bring new services to the community including a new cardiac catheterization laboratory, a robust vascular program, graduate medical education programs and a level three trauma center.

8/3/2017 8/2/2017 (Dentistry Today) ACP Launches Digital Dentistry Curriculum with Partner Schools"Incorporating this into our current curriculum will advance our program in terms of teaching and training in diagnostics, dental care, and oral function, particularly for restorative, surgical, and orthodontic procedures," said Mary Truhlar, DDS, MS, dean of the School of Dental Medicine at Stony Brook University.
Stony Brook has incorporated digital dentistry into its patient practices, training, and research. For example, it uses cone-beam technology in the diagnosis of oral pathology, placement of implants via guided surgery, and orthodontics. The school also has used digital dentistry to deliver restorations using CAD/CAM technology. And, it is researching the use of 3-D printing.

8/1/2017 8/1/2017 (Newsday) Brown tide has cleared in Great South Bay, authorities sayBrown tide, caused by harmful algal blooms that endanger shellfish and eelgrass, has cleared from the Great South Bay -- for now -- environmental authorities said Tuesday. "This is some good news," said Christopher Gobler, a professor at Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. "This is one of the longest brown tides there have ever been."

9/29/2017 9/28/2017 (Times Beacon Record) Stanley touches on SBU history, diversity, deficit during annual addressDuring his annual address, Stony Brook University's president celebrated the past and looked forward to the future. President Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr., delivered his State of the University Address to the Stony Brook campus community Sept. 27. He said the first graduating class of 1961 consisted of approximately 40 students. In 2017, the university granted 7,313 degrees and certificates, including master's and doctoral degrees that did not exist the first year.

9/27/2017 9/27/2017 (Phys Org) A first look at geographic variation in Gentoo penguin callsThe Gentoo Penguin's "ecstatic" call, consisting of repeated pairs of short syllables, is used to attract and contact mates. Maureen Lynch and her PhD advisor Dr. Heather Lynch (no relation) of Stony Brook University recorded ecstatic calls at 22 Gentoo Penguin colonies across the Antarctic Peninsula, southern Argentina, and nearby islands. While they found variation in call frequency and duration both within and between colonies, no clear patterns emerged based on latitude, region, or subspecies. An algorithm based on their data was able to classify calls to correct colonies better than random, but with a high error rate.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-09-geographic-variation-gentoo-penguin.html#jCp

9/26/2017 9/25/2017 (Times Beacon Record) Stony Brook University celebrates 60 years with communityOn Saturday, Sept. 23 Stony Brook University invited the local community, employees, friends and neighbors to experience CommUniversity Day and celebrate its 60th anniversary. The free event was filled with exploration, food, hands-on activities and performances highlighting the many things the university has to offer. Attendees visited a variety of themed campus "neighborhoods" to discover more about Stony Brook University.

9/26/2017 9/26/2017 (Space.com) Ancient Lake On Mars Was Hospitable Enough To Support LifeAn up-close view of Mars' rocky deposits by NASA's Curiosity rover shows a changing climate in the planet's ancient past that would have left the surface warm and humid enough to support liquid water -- and possibly life. Evidence of an ancient lake points to the prospect of two unique habitats within its shores; the lower part of the lake was devoid of oxygen compared to an oxygen-rich upper half. In a recent paper published in the journal Science, Redox stratification of an ancient lake in Gale crater," Stony Brook University geoscientist Joel Hurowitz and his colleagues used more than three years of data retrieved from the rover to paint a picture of ancient conditions at Gale Crater, the lowest point in a thousand kilometers.

9/18/2017 9/17/2017 (Newsday) Rising cost of insulin leads LI diabetics to take dangerous risksDr. Joshua Miller, director of diabetes care at Stony Brook University Hospital, said the predicament is worsening as the number of people with the disease climbs...Many patients require two forms of insulin -- short-acting and long-acting -- to control their blood-sugar level, Miller noted. And patients' rationing of medication is becoming an increasingly common maneuver to try to cope with the expense, he said. "I continually see patients who try to stretch their prescription with the hope that it will last longer," said Miller, an assistant professor of medicine and endocrinology at Stony Brook University School of Medicine.

9/15/2017 9/14/2017 (Business2Community) Who Can Win the Battle for Truth?Overwhelm the bad with the good. More experts need to speak out and share the facts to help push inaccurate information down the internet search list. The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University is one of a growing number of programs tackling how to communicate complex information in more understandable, relevant ways.

9/14/2017 9/13/2017 (Time) You Asked: Can Using a Laptop Make You Infertile?"The heat factor is a well-known negative impact on fertility, so we wanted to know if scrotal temperature really increased with laptop use," says Dr. Yefim Sheynkin, an associate professor of urology at Stony Brook University who coauthored a 2005 study on laptops and the heat they generate. "We found that, with laptop use, scrotal temperature did increase quite significantly." After an hour of use, scrotal temperature jumped about 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

9/14/2017 9/13/2017 (WSHU-FM/NPR) Long Island Reports Record-Breaking Toxic AlgaeA new study by the Clean Water Partnership finds that toxic algal blooms were discovered in every major bay and estuary across Long Island: 15 lakes and 20 beaches. This is the longest and most intense brown tide in Long Island's recorded history. Dr. Chris Gobler from Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences says he's never seen anything like it.

9/13/2017 9/12/2017 (Times Beacon Record) New SBU researcher plays 'critical role' in pancreatic cancer researchIt may take a village and then some to conquer pancreatic cancer, which is pretty close to what The Cancer Genome Atlas project assembled. Pulling together over 200 researchers from facilities across the United States, the TCGA recently published an article in the journal Cancer Cell in which the scientists explored genetic, proteomic and clinical information from 150 pancreatic cancer patients. Richard Moffitt, an assistant professor in the Departments of Biomedical Informatics and Pathology at Stony Brook University who joined the institution at the end of July, was the analysis coordinator for this extensive effort.

9/13/2017 9/12/2017 (Innovate LI) Eight Island Schools Ranked Among Top U.S. CollegesLong Island has plenty of big brains to drain. That's according to U.S. News & World Report, which has issued its 2018 Best Colleges survey, a highly regarded rite of September that ranks some 1,800 United States-based colleges and universities based on school and student performance and a host of other critical metric. Three regional institutions were ranked among the top national universities: Stony Brook University (No. 97 in the nation), Hofstra University (No. 132) and Adelphi University (No. 151) all made the national cut.

9/12/2017 9/12/2017 (Newsday) How LI universities, colleges place on U.S. News' 2018 rankingsU.S. News & World Report released its 2018 Best College rankings Tuesday, placing Princeton, Harvard, University of Chicago and Yale in the top national spots.
Long Island's public and private colleges are among the thousands in the nation judged using a formula that includes student retention and graduation rates, faculty resources, financial resources, student test scores and alumni...

9/12/2017 9/12/2017 (NPR) Is One Drink OK For Pregnant Women? Around The Globe, The Answer Is NoWhen it comes to drinking alcohol during pregnancy, some women wonder: Is it OK to have one drink?
"I do get that question often," says David Garry, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Stony Brook University Hospital. And, he says his answer is clear.
"There is no safe level of alcohol use during pregnancy," Garry explains, citing guidance from the American Congress of Obstetricians & Gynecologists.
The majority of women in the U.S. seem to be on board with this message. According to the CDC, about 90 percent of pregnant women say they refrain, though some may drink without disclosing it. "There's a social stigma to drinking in pregnancy, which is a good thing," Garry says.
In other countries, however, alcohol use during pregnancy appears to be more common. A 2015 study found that alcohol consumption ranged from 20 percent to 80 percent among cohorts of women in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the United Kingdom. The study found that some pregnant women may have had just one drink -- say, a glass of bubbly at a special event such as a wedding; others reported consuming a drink or two more regularly.
So, how risky is this? A new analysis, published this week in BMJ Open, aimed to answer this question. Researchers collected all the available data they could find from prior studies that had assessed the risks of drinking while pregnant.
"We compared drinking once or twice a week [at low levels] compared to not drinking at all," explains study author Luisa Zuccolo, a health epidemiologist at the University of Bristol.
Zuccolo and her co-authors found that consuming up to 32 grams of alcohol a week ( which is between two and three drinks) was associated with a 10 percent increased risk of preterm birth. However, it's not clear if this increased risk is caused by the alcohol exposure, or by other factors.
Overall, Zuccolo says, "we were surprised by how few studies have been published ... on such an important topic."
She says that, given the lack of robust data, it's hard to answer the question: Is one drink during pregnancy safe? And she and her co-authors conclude that further studies are needed to provide "a better estimation of the likely effects."
But experts say the lack of evidence is not a reason to challenge the current advice to avoid alcohol entirely during pregnancy.
"We don't 100 percent understand exactly when and how -- and at what point in pregnancy -- the effects occur from alcohol [consumption]," says David Garry, who is also a spokesperson for the American Congress of Obstetricians & Gynecologists.
But he says, think of it this way. The harms of alcohol consumption during pregnancy, especially heavy drinking, can be far-reaching. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder can lead to everything from birth defects to intellectual development problems to struggles with mental health. "It's everything from mild to severe problems."
"By simply not drinking, you can prevent the problem," says Garry. So, why take a risk?
This precautionary principle has become the basis of guidelines around the globe. Even countries where wine is woven into the culture, such as France, advise women that it is safest not to drink alcohol at all during pregnancy.
And, recently, Italy updated its guidance as well. This informational leaflet for Italian women says "50-60 percent of pregnant women in Italy consume some alcoholic beverages." Then, it warns: "Even minimal amounts of alcohol [during pregnancy] could harm the baby's health and development."

9/8/2017 9/8/2017 (Fortune) Hurricane Irma's Caribbean Victims Need America Right NowWhen images of Hurricane Irma bearing down on the Caribbean first appeared, residents girded themselves for its impact. Long accustomed to heavy-slugging storms, they tied down outdoor items, evacuated low-lying areas, and closed heavy shutters against the winds. As usual, they stocked up on water, batteries, and food. Streets emptied as locals headed for shelters or barricaded themselves in their homes. The few remaining tourists hunkered down in hotels.
The unprecedented strength and scope of Irma, however, quickly overwhelmed even the best-prepared with relentless rains and ferocious winds, clocked at over 185 miles per hour. The massive destruction wrought will require an equally massive recovery effort. Early reports confirm that while loss of life was limited, damage is widespread and severe. The Leeward Islands--including Anguilla, St. Martin, and St. Barthélemy--are devastated. Likewise, Puerto Rico will require costly repairs, exacerbating its already precarious economic situation. Long-suffering Haiti, also battered by Irma, is still recovering from last year's Hurricane Matthew. Irma is now roaring towards the Bahamas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Florida.
Hardest hit is Barbuda. While Antigua, only 30 miles to the south, escaped relatively unscathed, Barbuda suffered catastrophic harm. Satellite photos show it as a tiny speck obscured by Irma's enormous terrifying swirl, which reduced the landscape to rubble. After an initial inspection, Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, estimated nearly 90% of homes on the island are totally destroyed, with communications down, roads unpassable, and substantial flooding. Its airport, police station, and cell towers are all out of commission.
Throughout the northeast Caribbean, long-term international aid and private reinvestment will be needed for recovery of three essential sectors: infrastructure, tourism, and housing. Given the islands' reliance on foreign revenues from visitors, the first two are vital to the regional economy. On Antigua and Barbuda, for example, over 70% of its GDP is attributable--directly or indirectly--to tourism. Serving thousands of visitors annually, mainly from the U.S. and Europe, the tourist industry provides the region's main source of employment and has entailed substantial investments in hotels, transportation, cruise ship piers, and other amenities. Where these are damaged, rapid repairs are needed for local businesses to revive. More importantly, basic utilities providing clean water, reliable electricity, and sanitation must be restored and if necessary upgraded. An even greater challenge will be replacing the low-grade housing of many poorer residents, who had their sheet metal roofs shorn off and wooden frames splintered. Apart from the immediate costs of clean up and humanitarian aid needed for those left homeless, much of this housing stock will need to be rebuilt to withstand future hurricanes.
The Caribbean has a long record of hurricanes. The Leeward Islands have been particularly vulnerable due to their small sizes, low elevations, and limited resources. From the 17th century on, numerous eyewitness accounts attest to violent hurricanes that demolished sugar plantations, wrecked crops, and resulted in great loss of life for European settlers and enslaved Africans alike. Without modern storm tracking, moreover, they often had little advance notice. In the aftermath, islands often looked to the imperial powers of Europe and their North American trading partners to send food, timber, and other supplies.
With rising ocean surface temperatures precipitating more powerful hurricanes--Katrina, Sandy, Matthew, Harvey, and now Irma--their geographical range and capacity for destruction are increasingly vast and significantly more costly. Ominously, climate scientists generally concur that this trend toward the global intensification of super storms will likely continue. Even with ample advance warning, larger island populations, with numerous transient visitors and workers, are harder to shelter or evacuate. Moreover, the complex infrastructure of urban areas and tourist centers makes reconstruction more involved and expensive than in the past. Since hurricanes do not respect national borders, class differences, or immigration statuses, efforts to stem extreme weather events will require international collaboration.
Many Americans regard the Caribbean as one vast resort--a convenient place for barefoot weddings, romantic honeymoons, colorful cruise ship stops, or just an escape from winter blues. For millions of people, however, these vulnerable small islands are home. They are also among the U.S.'s closest neighbors, with historical ties dating back over 200 years. Many Americans of West Indian descent have deep roots there. At a time when the focus understandably may be on those impacted by Harvey and Irma closer to hand, we must not forget that the U.S. is still a wealthy and generous country that can afford to boost the resilience and recovery of the intrepid nations of the Caribbean. During times of trouble, good neighbors reflexively extend a helping hand to those in need.

9/7/2017 9/7/2017 (East Hampton Star) Lifesaving Heart Care Now Closer at Stony Brook Southampton HospitalJust over a month after the merger that rebranded the South Fork's only hospital Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, the doors opened for one of the most critical new services offered there.
The cardiac catheterization laboratory, at Stony Brook Southampton's Audrey and Martin Gruss Heart and Stroke Center -- where patients with severely narrowed or blocked arteries of the heart are treated with stents to open passageways -- was put to use for the first time on Tuesday. The procedures are considered lifesaving, some done on an emergency basis, others as elective treatments.
A blocked artery in a heart-attack patient should be opened within 90 minutes of contact with medical care, according to standards of care. Until Tuesday, the closest such lab had been at Stony Brook University Hospital, a 58-mile or one-hour ride from East Hampton Village. Patients in need of the diagnostic tools or the emergency lifesaving procedures available in a cath lab had to be either taken by ambulance or airlifted to Stony Brook, delaying that critical care.
"Faster access to the highest standard of cardiac care means more immediate, lifesaving diagnosis and treatment for residents of the East End of Long Island," said Dr. Travis Bench, the director of the cardiac catheterization lab at Stony Brook Southampton.
Stony Brook University Hospital's protocol for emergency catheterization has produced an average "door-to-perfusion" time of 56 minutes, almost 45 minutes below the New York State regulated treatment guidelines, according to Dr. Javed Butler, the chief of cardiology at Stony Brook University School of Medicine and co-director of the Stony Brook University Heart Institute. "This is the level of care we strive for at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital."
The new state-of-the-art facility in Southampton, staffed by cardiac specialists from the Stony Brook University Heart Institute, is the only facility of its kind on the East End. Doctors perform a non-surgical procedure in which a catheter is inserted through the skin to reach affected areas. Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead plans to open a cardiac catheterization laboratory this fall.
Depending on the patient's situation, procedures at the Southampton lab can include a detailed assessment of the heart's performance to locate blockages or narrowing of the arteries; angioplasty, a procedure that involves inserting a balloon-tipped catheter to clear blocked arteries; stenting, a procedure in which an expandable metal coil is placed in a narrowed artery to keep it open; intravascular ultrasound, which uses high-frequency sound waves to create images to help doctors determine the extent of disease, and Impella, a treatment for heart failure that implants a tiny device in the left ventricle of the heart to improve blood flow and stabilize the patient for transfer for further treatment.
It is an exciting advancement in health care on the eastern end of Long Island and will be a benefit to people from Montauk to Hampton Bays, according to Philip Cammann, a longtime paramedic on the South Fork and a member of the East End Ambulance Coalition, which supported the hospital's application for a cardiac catheterization lab. The new facility cuts down on the amount of time a patient has to wait before getting an emergency procedure done. While airlifting patients to Stony Brook has proven beneficial, having the procedure available in Southampton could shave off 45 to 50 minutes -- even more on a day like yesterday, when torrential downpours in the morning would have meant the helicopter was grounded. When talking about dying heart muscle, time is critical.
"We have the population," Mr. Cammann said. "It not only gives the patient and the community better care and more prompt care, it also puts the resources of E.M.S. back in service a lot quicker. It's a double benefit." During a time when emergency call volume has increased -- and membership in the mainly all-volunteer agencies has decreased -- getting a patient to the hospital and freeing up the ambulance to answer additional calls has become even more important.
The Suffolk Regional Emergency Medical Services Council announced the opening of the P.C.I. Center -- that stands for percutaneous coronary intervention -- to E.M.S. personnel on Friday. "Stony Brook Southampton Hospital may now be considered the 'closest appropriate hospital' for patients with acute coronary syndromes, in accordance with regional hospital transport policies," the statement said.
The New York State Department of Health approved the lab in March. The heart and stroke center, which was completed in 2015, was built with the future cardiac catheterization lab in mind. A single, 600-square-foot room is being utilized for the program. Start-up costs were estimated at nearly $1 million. The lab will be staffed around the clock, seven days a week.
Robert Chaloner, the chief administrative officer at Stony Brook Southampton, said the move "truly signals the beginning of a new era of health care for our East End communities."
"The new cardiac program is the most dramatic example of exactly the sort of collaboration we hoped would happen when Southampton Hospital joined Stony Brook Medicine, as we bring the region's top medical services closer to where people live," he said.

9/7/2017 9/7/2017 (CNN Money) The first New Yorkers go to college tuition-freeFlorence Yu can't believe her luck. She's starting college the same year New York made tuition free for middle-class students like her.
New York's Excelsior Scholarship is the first of its kind. It covers the cost of tuition for qualifying students who are enrolled in a two- or four-year degree program at any of the state's 88 public colleges and university campuses.
Plans for the scholarship were announced by Governor Andrew Cuomo in January. At first, students planning to attend college this fall didn't know whether it would become reality in time. It was officially approved by the legislature in April.
"I called my Dad at work, and I'm like 'oh my God, Dad, I could get free tuition.' It was so exciting and I remember it so vividly because it was so life changing," Yu said.
She's now a freshman at Stony Brook University double majoring in business and health science.
Like other students, Yu had to apply for the scholarship and didn't find out until August whether she qualified. The good news finally came, just before it was time to pay the bill. Her parents, immigrants from Myanmar, always wanted her and her brother to go to college, but were worried about finances.
"I've never seen my Dad so happy. He knows I really wanted to go to Stony Brook and he was really stressed about paying. Now he's able to, so it really changed a lot," Yu said.
Related: What you need to know about New York's free tuition scholarship
A 'life changing' option
When Governor Cuomo announced the program he said that college, like high school, "should always be an option even if you can't afford it."
While similar programs in other states have made tuition free for community college students, the Excelsior Scholarship is the first to include those pursuing a four-year degree.
The scholarship could save students as much as $27,000 over four years by cutting out tuition costs. The award doesn't cover fees charged by the school, or room and board. Students must also agree to live in state after college for the same number of years they received the scholarship, or it will be converted to a loan.
ny free tuition stony brook
Bonnie Tang, another Stony Brook freshman, is commuting from her home in Brooklyn, saving her about $13,000 in room and board costs. She'll have to buy a monthly train pass. And she'll still pay about $2,560 in fees this year. But everything else is free.
"My tuition is paid for and that saves me a lot of money," she said.
Tyler Mendoza, also a freshman at Stony Brook, and James Martello, a freshman at the University at Albany, both say they probably would have gone to a community college instead if they hadn't received the Excelsior Scholarship.
Gianluca Russo transferred to the University at Albany this year after finishing his associate's degree from Schenectady County Community College. The scholarship, he said, convinced him to stay in state to pursue a bachelor's in journalism.
ny free tuition russo albany
Many won't qualify
An estimated 75,000 people applied for the scholarship this year, but only about 23,000 will receive it, a spokeswoman for the governor's office said. An official number has yet to be released as summer course credits are counted and community college students continue to enroll for the fall semester.
Officials from several schools said the biggest reason why students were disqualified was because they receive other need-based grants that already cover the full cost of tuition. The Excelsior Scholarship doesn't offer additional funds to help with other expenses.
Other students are disqualified because their family income is too high. This year, the scholarship is offered to those who earn up to $100,000 a year. The limit will rise to $110,000 next year, and then up to $125,000 for the 2019-20 school year and thereafter.
Some critics say the Excelsior Scholarship may spend too many taxpayer dollars subsidizing the cost of tuition for students who would be enrolling anyway, and still leaves students from the lowest-income families behind. The program is expected to cost $87 million this year, and $163 million annually once fully implemented.
The scholarship is designed to help those students whose families previously earned a little too much to qualify for financial aid.
"While many students with the greatest financial aid have always attended CUNY tuition-free, far too many families just above the income eligibility -- which means most middle class families -- received little or no state or federal aid," said CUNY Chancellor James B. Milliken in a statement emailed to CNNMoney.
The Excelsior Scholarship will "help remedy this problem," he said.
Related: Tuition-free college is getting bigger
Income isn't the only eligibility requirement. Students must be a state resident and they must maintain a full time schedule. That disqualifies many community college students going to school while working. It also makes it tough for adults wanting to return to school to finish a degree they started years ago.
Ahmad James, 35, is one of those students. He has stopped and started college twice. Once because two deaths in the family required him to help out at home, and once because of Hurricane Sandy, which forced him out of his apartment. He found a new place in Long Island, but it extended his commute to work and didn't leave time for class.
But after he applied for the Excelsior Scholarship, he was told he was ineligible because he "did not earn a sufficient number of credits in each year" he was previously enrolled. The program requires you to take an average of 30 credits a year.
ny free tuition ahmad r james
He's working on finding other ways to help pay for college so he can advance his career in social services.
"I have the experience, but I need the piece of paper to do exactly what I want to do with my life," James said.
Related: How the average family pays for college
A 'positive buzz' on campus
It's too early to tell the impact the scholarship will have on New York's college campuses.
Many incoming freshmen had to enroll before officially being awarded the scholarship. Transfer students, though, were more likely to find out about the scholarship before making their decision. The University at Albany saw an 11% jump in applications from transfer students this year, which officials attribute at least in part to the Excelsior Scholarship.
More students are certainly expected to receive the scholarship in the future, as the income cap rises and awareness grows.
"It's creating a very positive buzz about public higher ed," said Stony Brook President Samuel Stanley.
"If you go around the country the story has generally been states pulling back on support of higher education, putting more of the burden on students and their families. So this is really changing that narrative in a very dramatic way," he said.

9/5/2017 9/5/2017 (Times Beacon Record) SBU's Ken Dill depicts prehistoric pre-protein processThe raw materials were here. Somehow, billions of years ago, these materials followed patterns and repeated and revised the process, turning the parts into something more than a primordial soup.
Ken Dill, who is a distinguished professor and the director of the Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology at Stony Brook University, took a methodical approach to this fundamental development. He wanted to understand the early statistical mechanics that would allow molecules to form long chains, called polymers, which contained information worthy of being passed along. The process of forming these chains had to be self-sustaining.
After all, Dill said, many activities reach an end point. Putting salt in water, for example, creates a mixture, until it stops. Dill, however, was looking for a way to understand auto-catalytic or runaway events. Lighting a forest fire, for example, is much more self sustaining, although even it eventually stops. Life has continued for over four billion years.
On Aug. 22, Dill, Elizaveta Guseva and Ronald Zuckermann, the facility director in biological nanostructures at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published a paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The researchers developed a fold and catalyze computational model that would explain how these long chains developed in a self-sustaining way, in which hydrophilic and hydrophobic polymers fold and bind together.
Random sequence chains of each type can collapse and fold into structures that expose their hydrophobic parts. Like a conga line at a wedding reception, the parts can then couple together to form longer chains.
These random chemical processes could lead to pre-proteins. Today's proteins, Dill said, mostly fold into a very particular shape. Pre-proteins would have been looser, with more shape shifting.
The workhorses of the body, proteins perform thousands of biochemical reactions. Dill suggested that this model "rates high on the list" in terms of the findings he's made over the course of his career.
Zuckermann described this work as significant because it lays out predictions that can be tested. It highlights the importance of chemical sequence information in polymer chains and "how certain sequences are more likely to fold into enzyme-like shapes and act as catalysts than others," he explained in an email.
Zuckermann works with substances he figured out how to make in a lab that are called peptoids, which are non-natural polymers. These peptoids are a "good system to test the universality of [Dill's] predictions," he said.
The "beauty" of Dill's work, Zuckermann suggested, is that "it should apply to most any kind of polymer system" where researchers control the monomer sequence and include hydrophobic and hydrophilic monomers in a particular order, putting Dill's predictions to the test.
For her part, Guseva worked in Dill's lab for her PhD thesis. She had started her research on something that was "more standard physical biology" Dill said, but it "was not turning out to be particularly interesting."
The scientists had a discussion about trying to develop a chemical model related to the origins of life. While exciting for the scope of the question, the research could have come up empty.
"There was so much potential to fail," Dill said. "I feel pretty uncomfortable in general about asking a graduate student to go in that direction, but she was fearless."
Dill and Zuckermann, who have collaborated for over 25 years, are trying to move forward to the next set of questions.
Zuckermann's efforts will focus on finding catalytic peptoid sequences, which are nonbiological polymers. He will synthesize tens of thousands of peptoid sequences and rank them on how enzyme-like they are. This, he explained, will lead to a better understanding of which monomer sequences encode for protein-like structure and function.
Zuckermann suggested that the process in this research could have the effect of transforming a soup of monomers into a soup of functional polymers. This, he said, might set the stage for the evolution of DNA and RNA.
Proteins could have been a first step towards a genetic code, although life, as currently defined, would not have blossomed until a genetic code occurred, too, Dill suggested.
The origins of DNA, however, remains an unanswered question. "We're trying to think about where the genetic code comes from," Dill said. "It's not built into our model per se. Why would biology want to do a two polymer solution, which is messy and complicated and why are proteins the functional molecules? This paper doesn't answer that question."
Dill and Zuckermann are in the early stage of exploring that question and Dill is hopeful he can get to a new model, although he doesn't have it yet.
Dill moved from the University of California at San Francisco to join the Laufer Center about seven years ago. He appreciates the freedom to ask "blue sky questions" that he couldn't address as much in his previous work.
Tyler graduated with a PhD from the University of California at San Diego and now works for Illumina, a company which which makes DNA sequencers. Ryan, meanwhile, is earning his PhD in chemistry from the University of Colorado and is working on lasers.
"We didn't try to drag our sons into science," Dill said. "With both kids, however, we had a workshop in the basement" where they often took anything that was within arm's reach and nailed it to a board. One of the finished products was a remote-controlled and motorized boat.
As for his lab work, Dill is thrilled to have this model that he, Guseva and Zuckermann provided, while he recognizes the questions ahead. Scientists "see something puzzling and, rather than saying, 'I need to avoid this, I don't have an answer,' we find it intriguing and these things lead from one step to the next. There tends to remain a huge number of super fascinating problems."

9/5/2017 9/5/2017 (AARP) Good News on Lyme DiseaseA leading Lyme disease researcher says new breakthroughs in fighting the dreaded disease may mean there will be vaccine on the market within five years.
Benjamin Luft, a doctor specializing in infectious disease at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, says his team's work, still to undergo clinical trials, focuses on a protein in the bacteria that causes Lyme. "It kills the organism while it is still in the tick," says Luft
Meanwhile, another Lyme vaccine known as VLA15 is being tested in Belgium and the United States. The FDA recently announced that vaccine is on the "fast track" for approval.
There's good reason for the FDA to fast-track a Lyme vaccine: An estimated 300,000 people are diagnosed with Lyme disease across the U.S. every year. Carried by deer ticks, cases are clustered in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, but the disease is spreading to parts of the Midwest, including Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Early-stage symptoms are typically -- but not always -- a bull's-eye rash in the area of the tick bite, fever and the kind of achiness brought on by flu. Later-stage Lyme can cause joint swelling, severe headaches, numbness, fatigue and heart palpitations.
Luft says those active outdoors should heed advice about preventing ticks by using insect repellant with 20 percent DEET, covering up arms, legs and head, and doing full body checks for ticks after being in wooded or grassy areas. "When people become retirees their lifestyle changes," says Luft, "so we see more and more cases of people who've taken up gardening or golf, and all of a sudden they have a higher chance of getting Lyme."

October

10/31/2017 10/30/2017 (NASA) NASA-Funded Competition Rewards Efforts To Predict Penguin PopulationsA competition funded by NASA recently aimed to improve statistical models that forecast penguin populations by bringing in data scientists to aid ecologists in their efforts...The data contest is the brainchild of Heather Lynch, associate professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University, and Grant Humphries, a former post-doctoral student with Lynch who now works as a data scientist at Black Bawks Data Science in the United Kingdom. Lynch's laboratory has developed a NASA-funded web tool, Mapping Application for Penguin Populations and Projected Dynamics (MAPPPD), which allows anyone, from fisheries managers to citizen scientists, to check on the population data available for the four species of Antarctic penguins and make forecasts for future trends.

10/30/2017 10/30/2017 (New York Times) The Fed Chair Should Be a 'Principled Populist'Stephanie Kelton, a former chief economist for the Senate Budget Committee Democratic staff and a professor of public policy and economics at Stony Brook University, met with Paul McCulley, a senior fellow and professor at Cornell University Law School and former chief economist at Pacific Investment Management Company, to discuss the Federal Reserve and who should be its chair, the 2 percent inflation target, President Trump and the debate over tax cuts, and what a "populist" Fed might look like.

10/30/2017 10/30/2017 (New York Times) Managing the Storm of a Toddler's Tantrum"Most children who have tantrums that are really severe in duration and intensity aren't just normally angry, they have something else wrong with them," said Dr. Gabrielle Carlson, professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Stony Brook University School of Medicine. "They may have A.D.H.D. or depression or another psychiatric disorder." For a long time, she said, tantrums were understood as aggression, but more recently, psychiatrists have begun to think of these children with "a very short fuse and a very large explosion" as being highly irritable, rather than aggressive.

10/20/2017 10/20/2017 (Crosscut) Are farm-raised salmon a 'pollutant'?"Raising Atlantic salmon on the West Coast has always struck me as unbelievably stupid," says Carl Safina, a professor of nature and humanity at Stony Brook University. Safina -- if the name sounds familiar, he once hosted a 10-part PBS series called "Saving the Oceans with Carl Safina" -- says, "The lessons of introduced species were there way before Atlantic salmon were moved [to the West Coast]."

10/19/2017 10/19/2017 (New York Times) Scientists: Big Changes Coming for 1 of Most Important Fish"There's a lot of science that says these fish are very important to the health of the ocean," said Ellen Pikitch, a marine fisheries scientist with Stony Brook University in New York. "There's every reason to move forward right now, and not wait."...."There's a lot of science that says these fish are very important to the health of the ocean," said Ellen Pikitch, a marine fisheries scientist with Stony Brook University in New York. "There's every reason to move forward right now, and not wait."

10/19/2017 10/18/2017 (Live Science) How the Plague Outbreak in Madagascar Got So Bad, So FastThe death toll from a recent plague outbreak in Madagascar is rising....One reason the plague that's spreading in Madagascar this year is so deadly is that the disease is spreading in its "pneumonic" form. Unlike the more common bubonic plague, which is spread from rats and fleas to humans, the pneumonic plague can spread from human to human, said Dr. Peter Small, an infectious-disease specialist and director of the Global Health Institute at Stony Brook University in New York.

10/12/2017 10/12/2017 (Reader's Digest) What Is Masked Hypertension--and Should You Worry About It?A new study published in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation found alarming rates of masked, or undetected, high blood pressure in healthy adults who had normal readings in the clinic. The researchers, out of Stony Brook University and Columbia University, monitored the blood pressure of 888 participants around the clock during daily activity. (Don't miss the 31 things you can do right now to lower your blood pressure.)

10/11/2017 10/10/2017 (New York Times) Making a Pitch, Again, for Barriers to Block Storm SurgesSince then, many government agencies have undertaken projects to make the region more resilient to storms like Sandy. Some plans have been drawn up for floodgates and other barriers. But none of the big ones have been constructed yet, said Malcolm J. Bowman, chairman and founder of the New York New Jersey Metropolitan Storm Surge Working Group. Mr. Bowman, a professor of physical oceanography at Stony Brook University, was introduced on Tuesday as the "Cassandra of storm surge" because he called for barriers to protect New York City after Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed New Orleans in 2005. In an op-ed essay he wrote in the wake of Katrina, Mr. Bowman prophetically said, "The question is not if a catastrophic hurricane or nor'easter will hit New York, but when."

10/11/2017 10/11/2017 (ABC News) Puerto Ricans face growing threat from disease after Maria, experts fear"The hurricane has left us in a critical situation with regards to medical infrastructure needed to save lives," said Dr. Rajeev Fernando, chief of infectious diseases at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital in New York, in an email to ABC News. Fernando is joining a team of doctors in Puerto Rico in order to help treat patients and protect them from disease-related threats to their health. And he says that he expects that the number of sick Puerto Ricans could climb, since many infections take two to three weeks to manifest.

10/6/2017 10/6/2017 (Innovate LI) Fresh Off First Nobel, Top Physicist Coming To SBUA freshly minted Nobel Prize winner will grace Stony Brook University this spring with a special guest lecture. California Institute of Technology Professor Kip Thorne, who this week was named a winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, is scheduled to visit in April to participate in the Della Pietra Lecture Series. The series, hosted by SBU's Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, gives a stage to world-renowned scientists and researchers to promote awareness of recent discoveries in mathematics and physical sciences.

11/29/2017 11/28/2017 (Slate) Time Poverty Wreaks Havoc on Sleep for Low-Income AmericansLarger, more systemic changes could also make a difference. According to Lauren Hale, a sleep researcher with the Stony Brook University School of Medicine, addressing populationwide sleep deprivation needs a multilevel approach involving not just individuals but also communities and policymakers who are willing to rethink their priorities and behaviors around sleep.

11/17/2017 11/15/2017 (US News and World Report) Health Buzz: Here's the Latest Research on Autism Spectrum Disorder and DepressionA man got very excited when he came upon the poster detailing Heather Garman's study at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C. That's because he had autism spectrum disorder and co-occurring depression - the type of patient Garman, a PhD candidate in the integrative neuroscience program at New York's Stony Brook University, is studying in her research. According to her preliminary results, individuals who have both autism spectrum disorder and depression are different than those who have just one or the other - and inflammation of a certain protein may be one of the causes. There isn't treatment for these individuals currently, nor is much known about why or how depression in autism spectrum disorder develops.

11/14/2017 11/14/2017 (Newsday) Report: Opioid abuse poses special problems for pregnant womenDr. David Garry, director of maternal and fetal medicine at Stony Brook University School of Medicine and co-chair of the task force, said pregnant women afflicted with problems brought on by narcotics can no longer be relegated to society's shadows. "This is a forgotten population," Garry said in an interview Monday. "We have had patients coming here withdrawing in labor and delivery." The time has arrived for outreach and treatment to interrupt patterns of drug use and potential harm to newborns, he said.

11/14/2017 11/14/2017 (Times Beacon Record) Stony Brook Medicine eases the pain in Puerto RicoMany in Puerto Rico still reeling from the devastation of Hurricane Maria recently received much-needed medical care from a local Long Island hospital. There were 23 staff members from Stony Brook Medicine stationed on the island from Oct. 24 to Nov. 8 as part of a 78-member relief team consisting of professionals from New York metropolitan hospitals. Three physicians, two nurse practitioners, nine nurses, four paramedics, four nursing assistants and one pharmacist from Stony Brook put their skills to use to help those with physical aliments and relieve overloaded hospitals in Puerto Rico.

11/13/2017 11/13/2017 (Wall Street Journal) Your Ph.D. Thesis Sounds Funky! Let's Dance to ItTee Pamon, a postdoctoral fellow at Stony Brook University in New York, longed to make his research on vibration-based therapies for musculoskeletal disorders "exciting to someone who isn't already excited about musculoskeletal diseases." Rather than bore friends and family with impenetrable jargon, hundreds of scientists over the past decade have shot videos for the Dance Your Ph.D. competition, sponsored by Science magazine and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The contest offers a $500 prize to winners in biology, physics, chemistry and the social sciences and for the overall winner.

11/13/2017 11/12/2017 (Scientific American) Life's First Molecule Was Protein, Not RNA, New Model SuggestsKen Dill and Elizaveta Guseva of Stony Brook University in New York, together with Ronald Zuckermann of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, presented a possible solution to the conundrum in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) this summer. As models go, theirs is very simple. Dill developed it in 1985 to help tackle the "protein-folding problem," which concerns how the sequence of amino acids in a protein dictates its folded structure. His hydrophobic-polar (HP) protein-folding model treats the 20 amino acids as just two types of subunit, which he likened to different colored beads on a necklace: blue, water-loving beads (polar monomers) and red, water-hating ones (nonpolar monomers). The model can fold a chain of these beads in sequential order along the vertices of a two-dimensional lattice, much like placing them on contiguous squares of a checkerboard. Which square a given bead ends up occupying depends on the tendency for the red, hydrophobic beads to clump together so that they can better avoid water.

11/13/2017 11/12/2017 (New York Times) She Warned of 'Peer-to-Peer Misinformation.' Congress Listened.For years, Ms. DiResta, a graduate of Stony Brook University in New York, had battled disinformation campaigns, cataloging data on how malicious actors spread fake narratives online. While wearing headphones so she wouldn't wake up her two sleeping children, Ms. DiResta watched on her laptop screen as lawyers representing Facebook, Google and Twitter spoke at congressional hearings that focused on the role social media played in a Russian disinformation campaign ahead of the 2016 election.

11/7/2017 11/7/2017 (VICE) Cocaine Farmers Are Hunting for an AlternativeThis demonstrates the potential of this kind of work in the most deforested regions of the country, like Caquetá, Guaviare, the south of Meta, the north of Chocó, the Catatumbo, the south of Bolívar, or the lower Cauca, where deforestation has occurred largely because of extensive cattle ranching. In fact, research published in the scientific journal BioScience and conducted by the Colombian biologist Liliana Dávalos (who teaches at Stony Brook University in the United States) demonstrated that the uncontrolled growth of agriculture and livestock farming has been one of the most significant factors in the loss of Amazonian forests--even more than coca itself.

11/7/2017 11/7/2017 (Live Science) Humans Doomed Caribbean's 'Lost World' of Ancient MammalsMORE
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Humans Doomed Caribbean's 'Lost World' of Ancient Mammals
The Caribbean islands were a paradise for ground sloths, monkeys, giant rodents, bats and shrew-like insectivores before the arrival of humans.
Credit: Illustration by D. Rini
Thousands of years ago, the forests of the Caribbean islands hosted more than 130 species of diverse mammal life, ranging from sloths and giant monkeys to mammoths and oversize rats. But all that changed after humans showed up, around 6,000 years ago.
After humans began populating islands in the Caribbean, native mammal species began to vanish from the region, according to the fossil record. Today, mammal diversity in the Caribbean is far lower than it was during the time after the last ice age, with only 60 bat species and 13 nonflying mammal species remaining. The story of when dozens of mammal species went extinct is written in fossils, but why they died out has been challenging for scientists to pinpoint.
However, a recent study that analyzed extensive geological evidence alongside records of human migration revealed that two waves of humans settling in the Caribbean -- first from the Americas, and then from Europe -- dealt a one-two punch to native wildlife and were chiefly responsible for driving so many Caribbean mammal species to extinction. By the end of the last ice age, mammal diversity in the Caribbean islands was at its peak, with a variety of ground sloths, moles, primates, bats and rodents, study co-author Liliana Dávalos, an associate professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University in New York, told Live Science.

11/6/2017 11/5/2017 (New York Times) The 'Click' Moment: How the Weinstein Scandal Unleashed a Tsunami"There is this web of enablers," Professor Kimmel, who runs the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities at Stony Brook University, said. "Bob Weinstein doesn't say to Harvey, 'You better stop or I'll kick you out of the company.' Billy Bush does not say to Donald Trump, 'That's disgusting, not to mention illegal.' In the sexual assault world we often talk about how we incorrectly interpret women's silence as consent. Well, we also mistake men's silence for assent."

11/4/2017 11/4/2017 (Wired) Squishy or Solid? A Neutron Star's Insiders Open to DebateBut theorists argue about what happens farther in, when densities creep past two or three times higher than the density of a normal atomic nucleus. From the perspective of nuclear physics, neutron stars could just be protons and neutrons--collectively called nucleons--all the way in. "Everything can be explained by variations of nucleons," said James Lattimer, an astrophysicist at Stony Brook University.

12/29/2017 12/29/2017 (Times Beacon Record) Stony Brook trauma care surgeon is an asset for Suffolk CountyWhen they come to him, they need something desperately. He empowers people, either to help themselves or others, in life and death situations or to prevent the kinds of traumatic injuries that would cause a crisis cascade. Dr. James Vosswinkel, an assistant professor of surgery and the chief of trauma, emergency surgery and surgical critical care, as well as the medical director of the Stony Brook Trauma Center, is driven to help people through, or around, life-threatening injuries.

12/27/2017 12/27/2017 (Newsday) Stony Brook professor released from prison in Africa, wife saysA Stony Brook University professor, Patrice Nganang, who was taken into custody at a Cameroon airport earlier this month has been ordered released by a judge and is on his way back to the United States, his wife said Wednesday...Stony Brook University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr. said in a statement Wednesday that he was gratified to hear the news. "As we await further details, we are grateful for all of the support and guidance from all those who were involved and look forward to welcoming Patrice back on campus," he said.

12/27/2017 12/27/2017 (Newsday) Stony Brook couple has second Christmas Eve babyA Stony Brook couple has one more thing to celebrate this holiday season. Jacki and Josh Grossman had their second child on Christmas Eve, exactly four years after their first was born -- in the same hospital, Stony Brook University Hospital, delivered by the same doctor, Phil Schoenfeld, MD. They showed off their newest edition on Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2017.

12/25/2017 12/25/2017 (WSHU/NPR) Doctor Warns Of Choking Hazards In Children's ToysWhile most parents are careful in giving toddlers age appropriate toys for the holidays, accidents can still happen. And it's often the little things that can cause the biggest problems. Dr. Christopher Muratore, chief of Pediatric Surgery at Stony Brook Children's Hospital on Long Island, says it only takes a minute for a toddler to swallow a part of toy, such as a Lego block or doll's shoe, that was given by an older sibling.

12/19/2017 12/19/2017 (Reuters) U.S. lifts funding ban on studies that enhance dangerous germsThe U.S. government on Tuesday lifted a 2014 temporary ban on funding research involving the flu and other pathogens in which scientists deliberately make them more transmissible or more deadly...Dr. Sam Stanley, president of Stony Brook University and chairman of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, which provided guidance on the new policy, noted the world's deadliest pathogens are evolving naturally. He said research is needed to understand and prevent devastating pandemics, such as the 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic that killed some 50 million people.

12/19/2017 12/19/2017 (Nature) US government lifts ban on risky pathogen researchThe US government has lifted its controversial ban on funding experiments that make certain pathogens more deadly or transmissible. On 19 December, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that scientists can once again use federal money to conduct 'gain-of-function' research on pathogens such as influenza viruses. But the agency also said that researchers' grant applications will undergo greater scrutiny than in the past...NSABB chair Samuel Stanley, the president of Stony Brook University in New York, is pleased that the new rules do not ban gain-of-function research outright. "Basic research on these agents by laboratories that have shown they can do this work safely is key to global security," he said in a statement. But Stanley fears the changes came at a cost: the three-year moratorium may have delayed research and reduced interest in research on these pathogens. "I believe nature is the ultimate bioterrorist and we need to do all we can to stay one step ahead," he said.

12/18/2017 12/18/2017 (Mongabay) Do protected areas work in the tropics?In 1986, Stony Brook University Professor Patricia Wright, then a budding primatologist, spent weeks combing the rainforests of eastern Madagascar in search of the greater bamboo lemur (Prolemur simus), a five-pound bamboo-eating primate that was feared extinct. It was only once she stopped over at a hotel in a small village for a night that her luck changed.

12/15/2017 12/15/2017 (The Atlantic) The Growing Partisan Divide Over FeminismThis September, Leonie Huddy and Johanna Willmann of Stony Brook University presented a paper at the American Political Science Association. In it, they charted the effects of feminism on partisanship over time. Holding other factors constant, they found that between 2004 and 2016, support for feminism--belief in the existence of "societal discrimination against women, and the need for greater female political power"--grew increasingly correlated with support for the Democratic Party. The correlation rose earlier among feminist women, but by 2016, it had also risen among feminist men. A key factor, the authors speculated, was Hillary Clinton. A liberal woman's emergence as a serious presidential contender in 2008, and then as her party's nominee eight years later, drove feminists of both genders toward the Democratic Party and anti-feminists of both genders toward the GOP.

12/14/2017 12/14/2017 (Futurity) Inequality grew as ancient people domesticated animalsAn analysis of 63 archeological sites across North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa links increasing wealth inequality and the rise of animal domestication. Published in "Nature," the study used house size as a measure of wealth. The sites included a range of economic systems--from ancient cities to hunter-gatherer communities--and spanned the past 11,000 years. Coauthor Elizabeth Stone, professor in the anthropology department at Stony Brook University, explains that the team expected wealth inequality to increase over time as societies and ruling systems developed but found Old Word societies experienced more wealth inequality than those in the New World.

12/14/2017 12/14/2017 (Innovate LI) With 'Fellows' Effort, SBU Podcasts A Wider NetIt's a big week for podcast innovations on Long Island.Just days after the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell launched a serialized podcast following the real-life adventures of first-year medical students, Stony Brook Southampton - in partnership with Connecticut-based WSHU Public Radio - has announced a first-of-its-kind Audio Podcast Fellows program.

12/13/2017 12/13/2017 (News India) Indian Americans start Tamil professorship at Stony Brook UniversityNEW YORK - Indian American college professors Bala and Prabha Swaminathan have created a Tamil professorship at Stony Brook University in honor of Bala's parents, called the Anandavalli and Dr. G. Swaminathan Endowed Research Professorship. "Tamil language is more than something to speak. It harbors a culture's history and traditions, and perpetuates identity and pride. Ultimately, when its wisdom is shared, Tamil language creates better cross-cultural understanding and cooperation," said Bala.

12/12/2017 12/11/2017 (India New England News) Bala and Prabha Swaminathan Establish New Professorship to Study One of the World's Oldest Languages--TamilSTONY BROOK, NY - With literary works dating as far back as 300 BCE, the Tamil language is nearly as old as Hebrew (335 BCE), and stands next to Chinese as the most enduring classical language still spoken today. Yet remarkably, while dozens of U.S. colleges and universities have Hebrew or Chinese language and cultural studies programs, only a handful offer Tamil. Bala Swaminathan and his wife, Prabha, are determined to change that. The couple has created the Anandavalli and Dr. G. Swaminathan Endowed Research Professorship in Tamil at Stony Brook University in honor of Bala's mother and father. Studying an ancient yet still relevant Tamil language and its literature, said Swaminathan, offers scholars insights into humankind's earliest worldview providing context for our life today and our collective, global future.

12/11/2017 12/10/2017 (Newsday) LI defense firms facing Dec. 31 cybersecurity deadlineSome companies may be able to get help through the Center for Corporate Education at Stony Brook University, which can provide government funding. We "can offset the cost for some of these companies," said Patricia Malone, executive director of the CCE. She has set a cybersecurity breakfast for manufacturers on Thursday that will also cover the requirements.

12/7/2017 12/7/2017 (Times Beacon Record) SBU's Israel Kleinberg designs device for earlier cavity detectionWhat if dentists could see developing cavities earlier? What if, once they discovered these potential problems, they could help their patients protect their teeth and avoid fillings? And, to top it off, what if they could do this without exposing their patients to radiation from X-rays? That's exactly what Israel Kleinberg, a longtime Stony Brook University dental researcher and the founding director of the Division of Translational Oral Biology at SBU, recently developed. Called the electronic cavity detector, this new tool was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration

12/7/2017 12/7/2017 (Times Beacon Record) Small business owners weigh in on Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, holiday shopping trendsStacey Finkelstein, an associate professor of marketing at Stony Brook University, said in a phone interview she has used psychological and behavioral economics to inform people about marketing problems, and she said a battle between instant gratification and the desire to support local stores is being waged for today's consumers. "Another tension for a lot of consumers who face this dilemma layered on top of this is this ethical quandary, which is 'I want to support businesses that are consistent with my code of ethics and the values that I have as a consumer,'" Finkelstein said.

12/7/2017 12/6/2017 (Science Daily) Brain activity and anxiety symptoms in youth with autism spectrum disorderThe error-related negativity (ERN) is a brain signal response to errors that is thought to reflect threat sensitivity and has been implicated in anxiety disorders in individuals without autism spectrum disorder (ASD)..."This study, led by my graduate student, Tamara Rosen, clarifies and focuses inconsistencies in previous research on the unique way error processing manifests and can impact anxiety symptoms in individuals with ASD," said senior author Dr. Matthew Lerner, of Stony Brook University. "These findings can help guide and pinpoint efforts to diagnose and treat the substantial co-occurring anxiety experienced by many people with ASD."

12/6/2017 12/6/2017 (Times Beacon Record) Stony Brook WTC Wellness Program expandsStony Brook WTC Wellness Program celebrated the official opening of its new one-stop health clinic in Commack Nov. 28. The program relocated from Islandia to the Stony Brook Medicine Advanced Specialty Care building, located at 500 Commack Road. The move allowed the program to expand from a monitoring facility into a 20,000-square-foot, integrative clinic where World Trade Center responders can receive more comprehensive medical treatment under one roof.

12/5/2017 12/5/2017 (CBS New York) Local High Schoolers Win Top Prize In Prestigious National Science CompetitionThree aspiring teen scientists are well on their way to reaching their ambitions. On Tuesday, they won the top prize in the prestigious Siemens National Science Competition in Washington D.C...The young scholars say they're now being tutored by top scientists at Stony Brook University. And don't forget the helping hand from their dedicated parents."For our parents for driving us to Stony Brook every day and for having our backs," Lee said. still just juniors in high school, but the brainy young ladies say they'll split their prize money equally to pay for college to fulfill their ambitions to become doctors and scientists.

12/5/2017 12/5/2017 (Newsday) LI trio wins $100G Siemens Competition team grand prizeThree young scientists from the Half Hollow Hills school district on Tuesday won the prestigious 2017 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology team prize for their research into cell division that could help find treatments to viruses, cancers and other diseases....The three thanked each other and their parents, as well as Michael Lake, academic research director for the Half Hollow Hills high schools, and their mentor, Ken-Ichi Takemaru of Stony Brook University.